


The Urchin King

by Elbowsnapper



Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow, Worm - Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, Dark, Humor, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-24
Updated: 2020-11-24
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:08:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 104,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27696734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elbowsnapper/pseuds/Elbowsnapper
Summary: Andy Bowman obtained the power to generate and control wires from an accident that took both of his parents from him. Emancipated, lonely, and looking for attention, he latches on to a man named Gaston. Hired for a mission with the whole world on the line, or at least the moon, a mercenary is born. Complete.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

_Tuesday, April 15th, 2009._

There were five minutes left until class finished, and all I could think was that it could not be over fast enough. There wasn’t anything really wrong with Arcadia; I just _hated_ being trapped inside all day.

Arcadia High was a particularly famous high school, at least to those who lived in Brockton Bay. It was located right in the middle of Downtown, the busiest and most populated section of the city. It played host to roughly two-thousand-five-hundred students, a somewhat large but otherwise relatively normal high school. Arcadia’s call to fame was that it had _two_ different superhero teams in attendance.  
  
The Brockton Bay Wards and New Wave.

Arcadia didn’t have any inherent quality that made it more special than any other school, although it _was_ the nicest public school in Brockton Bay by a large margin. The reason why both of the superhero teams had chosen to go here instead of somewhere else was that it was only two minutes away from the central business district.  
  
Deep within the Parahuman Response Team building lay the Ward’s headquarters, and they worked together hand in hand. The proximity made it easy for the Wards to reach their equipment when they were called to action during school hours.

The school itself cultivated a very professional demeanor; the staff affected attitudes of highly successful business-folk. The teachers were all young, confident, and dressed in suits. The students had been dressed to match with black business trousers, skirts, white long-sleeved shirts, black dress shoes, and black ties. If I was being honest, I thought everybody just looked like a little CEO in training.

My abnormal height and stick-thin limbs removed any chance of capitalizing on the same qualities.

I was currently sitting in class, staring at the back of the newest transfer student, who had, for whatever reason, decided to choose the seat directly in front of me. How tricky of them, transferring a new student in; right in the middle of the year. Arcadia had a habit of shuffling new students into the school at odd times; sometimes it was a normal kid, sometimes it was a hidden cape, you could never really tell which was which. They did it this way to throw us off the scent, at least I thought that’s why they did it, nobody had ever confirmed it. The new kid had short red hair, pale white skin, and a strip of freckles across his face. I studied him actively, trying to find something that would tell me if he was a cape or a normie.

Triumph, Aegis, and Vista, the three Brockton Bay Wards.

This kid definitely wasn't Vista, who was about five feet tall, on her best day, and also a girl. He probably wasn't Aegis either, because he had a much darker skin tone than the new kid. It _could_ be Triumph, but it probably wasn’t, the skin tone was similar, but the build was all wrong. Triumph was a big guy with broad shoulders while the red-haired kid had a much slimmer build. Triumph had also been a Ward for more than a year at this point; surely, they had snuck him into Arcadia by now.

Unless they were playing the long con, I stared at him for a moment longer before sighing. This dude obviously wasn't one of the Wards, I had spent a lot of time trying to figure out which of the students might secretly be a cape, but I've never had confirmation one way or another.

New Wave, on the other hand, wasn't even attempting to keep their identities hidden; in fact, they had turned around and done the exact opposite. They used to be called the Brockton Bay Brigade before they had rebranded, and every single one of their identities was known publicly. The younger member's names had all been announced within _weeks_ of gaining their powers, and three of them were enrolled at Arcadia right now, while the fourth was still in middle school.

Laserdream, Crystal Pelham. Glory Girl, Victoria Dallon. Panacea, Amy Dallon. Shielder, Eric Pelham. Laserdream was in the year above me, while Glory Girl and Panacea were both in the year below me. Shielder would end up here eventually, too.

I found it very strange that there were so many capes in one school, and there might have even been more of them as well, hidden amongst the other students. Hero's, Villains, or Rogues, any one of these kids could secretly be a cape.

It was entirely possible; _I_ was one of them, after all.

* * *

I always headed into the central business district when classes finished for the day. I would find a nice seat on a bench or a spot on a wall and just watch people. Today was no exception in that regard; I watched people go about their day, unaware that somebody was studying them.

There were all sorts of interesting things to observe, people shopping, others meeting up with their lovers, families eating meals together, or even groups of friends going to see the latest movie. All interacting with each other, with wants, desires, and needs.

I people watched until the sun fled from the sky, and the city began to grow dark. The darker it became, the more the crowds began to thin out until only a few brave souls remained. Nobody wanted to be out too long after dark in Brockton Bay, it just wasn't worth the risk.

I hopped off the bench after I had nobody left to observe and pulled my hood back up before working my way to the nearest bus stop, but not even five minutes had passed before I heard something unusual.

A steady rhythm, almost like a lumberjack chopping wood, each thump was accompanied by an exclamation of pain.

"Ah! Stop! Get off! Fuck! _Fuck_! Stop it! Fuck!" The voice was male, and strangely enough, it sounded more surprised than pained.

I leaned back to peer down the alleyway and witnessed a strange scene.

A man was lying on the ground, with his arms covering his face, while another man struggled to wrap a roll of duct tape around his legs. There was a third man launching a steady stream of kicks into the trapped man's midsection; each kick separated precisely by two-second intervals. All three of them wore matching lab coats, made of bright white material, and each had the builds of men who had spent a great deal of time seated behind a desk. Behind the three struggling men, the alleyway branched off out of sight, but I could just see the rear end of a white van peeking out from the corner with its engine still running.

How mysterious.

"What on earth are you doing?" I spoke down the alley.

The man with the roll of duct tape jumped up in shock, before pointing his finger directly at me while the other man peeked around his shoulder. His coat fell open on one side, I could see a harness of some sort strapped around his chest, and a flash of silver lay under it, a gun.

"Ah!" The man pointed, looking worried and upset. "Get out!"

"Get out?" I asked.

"The Alley! Get out of the Alley!" Pointy shouted, finger shaking angrily.

I stared at him for a moment.

"Are you kidnapping him?" I asked curiously.

I turned my head to look at the man on the ground; he hadn't moved much except to angle his neck to stare back at me. The man with the gun was still holding him down with his foot planted firmly on his chest.

"Of course not!" Pointy denied, looking even more flustered.

The Gunman slowly reached into his coat, how sneaky.

"I'm thirty-two, so _technically_ this is an abduction." The man on the ground said weakly.

The man stopped reaching into his coat.

" _Shut up,_ Gaston." The man said incredulously while pushing his foot down onto Gaston’s chest.

The man turned back and whipped his hand out of his coat, brandishing the gun in my direction in an instant. The pointing man hurriedly stepped back out of the line of fire, looking nervous.

The gun glinted once.

I wasn't worried; I had already stacked the deck in my favor before I had even stepped into the alley.

"Sorry, kid, wrong place wrong time." The Gunman spoke, putting on airs.

It was a fairly good line, but his voice was thin and reedy, so it fell just short of intimidating. The Gunman was still for a long moment before letting out a muffled grunt. Five seconds passed before he grunted again, and Pointy turned to him worriedly.

"Aren't you going to shoot him?" Pointy asked nervously, but the Gunman held his silence.

"Martin?" Pointy pleaded, before reaching out and touching him on the shoulder.

Pointy glanced down at his hand before rubbing his fingers together as if he could somehow achieve synaesthesia.  
  
“What?” Pointy said, confused.

Martin suddenly began to rise off the ground, and he grunted in surprise. Pointy yelled before grabbing his leg in a panic and began trying to pull Martin down and climb upwards at the same time. Pointy shouted the entire time while the still prone man just stared up at them both with his mouth open wide.

I couldn’t help it; I started laughing.

The entire situation was so bizarre, scientists trying to abduct other scientists, what exactly had I just stumbled on?

I managed to pull myself together a few moments later, fortunately, my hood was still pulled up from earlier, and it was rather dark in the alley, my face was covered in shadows from the hood, and the closest streetlight was directly behind me, I wasn’t too worried about them seeing my face. I shook my head before generating some wires to cover my face anyway; there was no point in taking chances.

"Gaston, was it?" I asked cheerfully.

Gaston wrenched his torso my way as best he could with his feet still taped messily together.

"Yes! I'm Gaston!" Gaston said happily, he scrabbled at the tape, trying to find the end of it for a moment before he slapped his hand against the bulk of it. "Can you help me out of this?"

I generated another wire, and it glinted in the streetlight above my shoulder, before darting towards Gaston. The wire snaked under the tape and cut through it with a moment's work. I glanced over to Pointy, he had managed to climb about half a Martin high, and his lab coat hung limply beneath him as he did his best to hold onto Martin’s arm like a limpet.

Martin continued to slowly rise into the air until finally, he rose into a beam of light from the streetlight, revealing that he had been covered in hundreds of thin shiny wires. They were pulled taut and branching off in every direction.

Gaston looked up at my work in total awe.

I'm so god damned cool.

Martin suddenly dropped his gun, and it fell through the air before landing on the ground with a metallic thunk. It fired once, flipping over from the force. Gaston yelped and ducked his head. I tried to jump backward and pull myself towards the nearest wall at the same time. Instead, I accomplished neither as I lurched backward and flopped onto my back. I did my best to keep the momentum going and rolled back to my feet before I pressed my hand against the wall to steady myself.

I studied everybody for a moment, but there were no cries of pain, there was no blood, everyone was unharmed. Then Pointy lost his grip and fell flat on his back in the alley.

Gaston cowered. Martin grunted. I sighed.

* * *

Ten minutes later, I finally made it to the bus stop and patted myself on the back for a job well done. Martin and Pointy were left wired together at the corner of the street, mostly uninjured.

I say mostly because Pointy had managed to hit his head on the ground when he fell, so he actually had a concussion. Martin, in a strange twist of fate, had hurt his foot while kicking Gaston.

Gaston, what a name.

Gaston’s arms were dirty and bruised from trying to defend himself, but he was relatively unharmed. The man had thanked me profusely, and before I could ask him anything he dashed away, he was so excited to be free of the tape that he had tripped over, going all the way down to his hands and knees before he caught himself.

I left barely a minute after he had.

I hadn’t realized that I had lost my wallet until the bus driver told me, in no uncertain terms that I would not be getting on the bus without paying.

Asshole.

I quickly returned to the scene of the crime, thinking that I may have dropped it somewhere, but the police were already there, having responded to the gunshot with haste. I checked the alley, but my wallet had grown legs and walked away.

I traced my path back to the CBD and then further back to Arcadia in hopes that I might have lost it earlier in the day. Neither hide nor hair of my wallet was ever found that dark and stormy night. It looks like I was walking home. Fuck.

* * *

An hour later, I finally got home, surprisingly unmolested by the dark underbelly of Brockton Bay. Was it skill, cunning, or charm that had granted me safe passage?

Probably all three, but who could truly know.

Brockton bay was a scary place at night, and not much better during the day. Anybody traipsing about willy-nilly in the dark deserves to get shanked. Junkies, gangs, and killers roamed the streets.

Not to mention the caped assholes running around blowing shit up.

Empire Eighty-Eight, the Azn Bad Boys, the Merchants, and others, all with their own territories, rules, and goals. Not a shred of restraint between them. But tonight was a quiet night for once.

I didn't have to stop any more abductions; the worst thing I saw was someone texting and driving. Can you imagine being that guy? What an asshole.

Speaking of assholes, Gaston looked about as bruised and battered as when I last saw him, as he sat in the kitchen of my one-bedroom apartment. His lab coat folded neatly beside him.

He looks up from a bowl of cereal and waves unashamedly with the hand holding the spoon. I frown at him. He chews.

"There better be some milk left." He nods happily and points towards the fridge, still chewing. I pour myself some cereal and drown it in milk before sitting at the table across from him.

I take a mouthful. Chew. Swallow. Yum.

"What can I do for the strange man, eating cereal in my kitchen?"

He grins before launching into a gripping tale of adventure, danger, and a daring escape. He had helped to build something terrible, he said, something that would change the world as we knew it, but he had a change of heart and tried to destroy it.

He told me how he was a good man once, how he could be a good man _again_ , that, to save the girl he loved he would go to the ends of the earth, he told me how he'd fought off _twenty_ men, as tall as they were wide, with guns for hands. He told me how he'd barely managed to fight his way free from that ambush with his life intact.

Wow. Not quite how I'd remembered the event.

"Gaston," I say to him. "You are so full of shit."

He grins. I continued to eat my cereal, chewing loudly.

"What has this got to do with me?" I ask.

"I need your help with something, and it's kinda important." He says it like we're old buddies as if he hadn't just broken into the apartment of a fifteen-year-old boy.

* * *

It turns out the guy is the former assistant of a cape—a Tinker called String Theory. A tinker, for those unaware, is a 'superpower' that allows someone to make crazy shit.

Tinker-tech is nearly always incomprehensible to other people and unable to be replicated or maintained without the person who made it, or another tinker of equal skill.

"String Theory? Isn't she that Villain that blows things up? Are you actually an evil henchman?" I ask, my mind spluttering. Were Martin and Tape-guy the good guys? Secretly hero's with names like Baskin and Robbins? Were they heroically abducting a villain's evil minion? Had I doomed Brockton Bay?

Gaston pauses for a moment, before pretending I hadn't spoken. Damn, nobody can be an asshole like Gaston.

His job had consisted of acquiring materials, buying equipment, setting up warehouses and other sites, hiring people, and delegating tasks to the peons (he _actually_ called them that.) It turns out that String Theory has recently finished making her newest masterpiece, something called a G-Driver.

Gaston looks at me patiently, waiting. I sigh.

"Gee, what's a G-Driver?" I ask, deadpanned.

His eyes light up, and he jumps into a lecture, punctuating his words with gestures of the spoon.

"So, a G-driver blows shit up." I cut him off at the two-minute mark while stroking my non-existent beard in understanding; _truly_ , I am unfathomably wise.

"It's way more complicated than that!" Gaston says in a wounded tone. "You can't just-"

"That's really interesting," I continue loudly talking over him while still stroking my face and he deflates.

"Anything else?" I wondered, "What's her target this time?"

This G-Driver and the rest of String Theory's Tinker-tech apparently come with a countdown timer. The countdown starts the moment the device starts being built. She's been around a long while apparently and has figured out the intricacies of her power. She's worked out how to game the system, so to speak.

Buy all the tools, equipment, and materials in advance. Setup and secure the workshop. Build the device in one session. The device is aimed at its target.

All that's left is the countdown, a countdown that has already begun.

6 days 5 hours and 30 minutes before String Theory blows up the moon.

* * *

"Why does String Theory want to blow up the moon?" I ask, resigned.  
  
Why would you _help_ someone blow up the moon? I should have let Martin get a few extra kicks in.

"Art." He says, stirring the cereal. His eyes are unfocused, remembering something from the past. "She views her work as a form of art, and she wants to show it to the world."

"Okay then," I say as if that explains anything. "Crazy lady wants to make art. Fine. I can accept that. Why did you help her? Why did you stop helping her?"

He refocuses on the present and looks me in the eye. A gust of wind comes through the window and ruffles his hair.

"Because I love her," Gaston says with conviction.

Jesus Christ, is this guy from an anime? I get up and shut the window, none of that shit in my house, he waits for me to sit back down. I take a moment to gather my thoughts, but the second I started to reply, he just talked right over the top of me.

_Asshole._

"It's because I love her that I _have_ to stop her she's going to get sent to the Birdcage, and I'll never see her again." Gaston looks agonized at the thought.

I watch as he clenches his hands tightly into fists like he's trying to _squeeze_ the feels away.

"I _won't_ let that happen." Gaston declares firmly.

"Dude," I look at him in disbelief. "She's going to blow up the _moon_ in six days."

"I love her." Gaston continues like he hadn't heard my protest.

I see his hair ruffle slightly, and my gaze snaps to the window, it's still shut. Spooky.

"You wouldn't understand, you've never been in love." Gaston holds his head in his hands, peeking out at me from behind his fingers.

Gaston is clearly waiting for a response, but I lean back in my chair because he's wrong, I understand perfectly.  
  
I was in love once, a long, _long_ time ago, back when my heart was still capable of such a thing before _the betrayal_. Thirty-four days ago, to put it on the calendar, almost a lifetime really, when I caught my first crush giving Thomas Payton a handjob in the park, I _try_ not to dwell on it, but time has only muted the pain.

I look Gaston dead in the eyes and give him my answer.

"Hell, no!" I cry, and it comes out like a sharp thurst, rapid and without mercy. "This has _nothing_ to do with me, _why_ are you even in my house?"

Gaston’s Anime-Esque determination instantly turns into the sads, and I momentarily feel like I've kicked a puppy, but he bounced back a moment later, having steeled himself.

"I didn't want to do this," Gaston says apologetically, pointing the spoon in his hand at me threateningly.  
  
Milk dripped from the spoon to the table.

"I need your help, _Andy Bowman_ ," Gaston says before he takes his other hand from his pocket and places my wallet on the table. "Otherwise known as Urchin."

He's still brandishing the spoon as I stare him down, and my mind raced, but not a shred of emotion appeared on my face. I knew he had figured it out as soon as I saw him in my kitchen; he knew I was a cape. Is _he_ a cape? A Thinker? Do others know, am I in danger?

Do I need to move to a new city, change my name, and become the R-rated Cape, Bondage?!

Gaston would need to die, of course, nobody was allowed to know that the confident, daring, _and_ attractive Andy Bowman, was secretly the confident, daring, and attractive cape, Urchin.

Over the next fifteen seconds, I slowly let an expression of rage cover my face, at the eleven-second mark, Gaston was starting to look uncomfortable, but he waited patiently for me to finish.

"You total _asshole,_ Gaston!" I yelled, lashing out and crossing my spoon against his own in an instant, but he immediately firms his hold in surprise.

A power struggle not unlike an arm-wrestling contest began, milk from both spoons is flung from the point of impact, tiny droplets splashing against the tabletop. How could he _do_ this to me? After I went out of my way to save him. I beat up Martin and Tape-guy for this asshole, the betrayal stings.

It's the Thomas Payton incident all over again.

"You would betray _me_ after everything we've been through?" I silently thread wires under my sleeve and around my arm to give me a slight strength advantage.

The spoons are pushed inexorably towards Gaston. I am Inevitable.

Gaston struggles to hold me back before he makes a snap decision and switches to a two-handed grip, sliding his feet to a better position. The kitchen table weathers our combat stoically, as he uses the additional leverage to force me back an inch, the spoons shake violently.

So _this_ is the power of a Scientist.

I stand abruptly, forcing him back until his chair only has two legs on the ground, milk sloshes over the edge of his bowl from the sheer forcefulness of my advance.

My bowl remains empty.

"What do you mean everything we've been through?" Gaston grits, his teeth gnashed together as I push him back, he prepares to play his final card, but it's far too late, he desperately hooks his foot under the lip of the table, barely holding back the spoon, an inch from his face. "We've only just met!"

I watch him struggle for a moment, from where does he draw such desperate strength? Is it the power of love? The depths of his hatred?

He makes for a pitiful sight covered in milk, cereal, and his face is bright red from the exertion.

"It's over, Gaston. I have the high ground."

"Wait!" Gaston lets out a yelp as I tip him over backward.

Gaston lands on the floor with a cacophony of utensils, furniture, and milk.

"I'll pay you." Gaston finishes lamely from the floor.

"Deal." I agree immediately; money is awesome.

* * *

"I haven't even said how much I'm paying you," Gaston says from the floor.

Flat on his back like a deranged turtle before he manages to sit up, I need to make a play before he retakes control of the negotiations.

"Twenty-Five-Thousand. Upfront. Cash." I say, looking smug. "In one of those cases, like the movies."

Gaston looks at me surprised but agrees to the amount almost immediately. I squint at him suspiciously, he agreed way too quickly, he didn't even _try_ and haggle, have I made a terrible mistake?

Gaston gets up and shakes my hand.

"No take-backsies." Gaston grins at me.

Fuck, I think I've been had, this bastard had totally scammed me, I should have asked for double.

Gaston's got more than a decade of experience on me, I will have to draw upon all of my most cunning linguist skills just to stay ahead of this guy. Gaston picks the chair back up and sits at the table; I join him after a moment.

The mess remains on the floor, untouched.

Gaston steeples his hands in front of his face like he's Gendo Ikari, reaching up and adjusting his non-existent glasses with a finger, I can imagine the glint.

Nice.

"Alright, Boss, how are we going to do this?" I ask, business face firmly attached.

Urchin the Rogue has evolved into Urchin the Mercenary now, _bitchin_.

* * *

Gaston outlines the plan; the goal is simple; we need to destroy the G-Driver before the countdown reaches zero. String Theory, unfortunately, has a backup plan. If we are detected whilst entering the facility, there are other explosive devices that she will activate and start blowing shit up in the city.

Three of them, if you want an exact count.

Spread out across the downtown and commercial districts, each with a big enough yield to level a city block. Additionally, If we set off the alarms while breaking in, the facility's _defenses_ will activate. String theory will set off the bombs, and the heroes will respond to all the shit blowing up in the city.

String Theory will most likely be the prime suspect, shes used bombs in the past, and she literally announced Brockton Bay as her next destination months ago, fucking villains man.

The heroes will then come down on her like the fist of God, which will result in the G-Driver being discovered, String Theory getting sent to the Birdcage, and Gaston's dreams of saving the girl he loves shattered.

So to summarize; A stealth mission.

Objectives; Avoid Detection. Destroy G-Driver. Disarm the Bombs. Capture String Theory.

I should have asked for more money.


	2. Chapter 2

_Wednesday, April 16th. 144 hours._

I spoke to Gaston for several hours, and we managed to hash out the details of our partnership. I would be a bodyguard that runs around completing tasks and fetching things, with the occasional sidestep into beating people up. Gaston was simply the man with the plan and would be using his logistical experience to work out the exact details of how we would go about stopping String Theory’s shenanigans. It was almost midnight when we finally wrapped up our conversation, and I could not help but let out a mammoth yawn. So this was the life of a mercenary.

I slept easily in my single bed, despite having a person who I had only met today crashing on my couch, and I doubt I would have woken up for anything short of a house fire. What eventually did wake me up was the sound of Gaston knocking shit around in the kitchen, the rude asshole. Just help yourself, bastard, it is fine, Andy will not mind. I forced myself to take a quick shower before I finally joined him in the kitchen, and I made sure to psych myself up before I stepped into the room, completely ready to ask him just where the hell did he think he was.

I never got the chance, and my anger immediately vanished after I realized he had cooked us both breakfast. Two eggy eyes and a strip of bacon for a mouth, it was happy to see me, and the feeling was mutual. The two of us bonded over breakfast, talking about whatever caught our fancies. Eventually, we found ourselves full of food and ready to greet the day, so the conversation slowly turned into more mission-related topics.

We seemed to be of two minds when it came to deciding on how we should go about things. I personally thought that we should just go in, kick String Theory's villainous ass and tell her to cut the shit. I suggested as much to him, but he disagreed vehemently. We ended up debating it in detail, and any progress we had made in the conversation immediately ground to a halt.

"Explain to me why I can't just go for the full-frontal assault again?" I demanded, marveling at how Gaston's face had turned a bright red.

I had made a game of continuing to suggest bizarre variations of a full-frontal assault, and he seemed to be getting more pissed off with every iteration. I was honestly amazed by my own magnificence; truly I was one of a kind, the greatest mind amongst my peers to be sure.

"Heh," I continued after a moment, "I'd give String Theory a full-frontal assault if you know what I mean," I told him, waggling my eyebrows.

Gaston looked like he knew what I mean, and he also looked like he wanted to punch me in the face because of it. Thinking about it, I do not actually know what she looks like, so maybe I would not, who really knows.

Gaston took a deep breath to regain his tranquillity, before letting it out slowly.

"Just listen, Andy. We can't go after any of the current objectives yet." Gaston said, "She is not going to leave the base until the countdown is over. So we cannot wait her out, and there are bombs in the city, we can’t get to her that easily."

Gaston clasped his hands behind his back and paced the length of the room, a serious expression on his face once more.

"Even if we wanted to capture her, we would need to infiltrate the base to do so." Gaston stopped pacing before turning to look at me. "Which we _can't_ do because all of the explosives in the city are controlled remotely by a computer there."

I hold my silence under his unblinking gaze, and he stares at me for an uncomfortable amount of time before I finally relent.

"If we get caught in the base, she starts blowing shit up." I entertain his need for an audience, and he nods seriously.

"We also can't go after the bombs in the city." Gaston says, beginning to pace once more, "Because it might alert her. I don't know how frequently she checks the computer, but I do know that she _does_ check it."

"If she notices, she starts blowing shit up," I summarise once more, and he nods at my compliance.

"Which leaves us with the computer itself, which we can't remove from the base without setting the bombs off." Gaston pauses for a moment before blinking once. "Not that we could get to it without alerting her in the first place."

We had come full circle, once again, and I hold my silence.

He turns to look at me when I do not immediately speak, and it quickly turns into a staring contest. Unfortunately, my eyes immediately begin to water; I was not at all prepared for this contest of wills. I blink first.

Fuck, nobody can stare like Gaston.

"Which she will immediately respond to by blowing shit up," I admit defeat, rubbing at my poor watering eyes.  
  
Gaston beams at me, completely unaffected; he has transcended humanity.

"Exactly! I'm glad you understand now how delicate the situation is." Gaston moved to the center of the room before digging his hands into his coat's deep pockets.

He suddenly raised his hands and spread his coat out like the wingspan of a gigantic goose. A power play; I had seen this before on Animal Planet. It was a sign of aggression and dominance.  
  
Gaston flapped his arms once, and I watched him nervously.

"What can we even do then?" I asked, careful to keep the kitchen table between the two of us. "It sounds like a mission failed to me. We can't complete any of our objectives, and time is quickly running out."

"We rob a bank, of course," Gaston says easily, flapping his wings a final time before letting his arms drop.

I relaxed.

"Of course!" I said happily, not understanding the connection in the slightest.  
  
Gaston squints at me for a moment before raising a single eyebrow, and I take the olive branch.

"Why are we going to rob a bank, Gaston?" I ask cheerfully.

"We are going to need a team," Gaston says thoughtfully, punctuating the statement with a clap of his hands. "For that, we are going to need more money."

Gaston explained his thought process without any prompting on my part, and I was beginning to think that he just enjoyed the sound of his own voice. The plan was simple; we break into the Brockton Bay Central Bank and steal all the money, fantastic. Then we use that money to hire two other capes to join our team, the mans a genius, truly.

We argued over team balance for a while, I wanted more DPS, and he wanted more utility. He made a good case for why we did not need more damage dealers, so I let him win that one, but in return for my generosity, I demanded that both teammates be totally hot babes. Gaston huffed a bit, arguing that we were not exactly able to exclude people based on such arbitrary reasons.

I dug my heels in; I would neither bend nor break. I was getting totally hot babes, or the deal was off.

Ignoring all that, we decided that the first cape would have to have some sort of focus on hacking or computer usage. The second cape had to be a sneaky one who could get inside the facility without getting caught. This seemed like the best combination for accessing the computer and stopping it from blowing up the city. After we had taken out the bombs, we could deal with the real issue, String Theory, and her G-Driver.

In about an hour, we would be meeting a cape who would be helping us with our problems. Gaston implied that he has worked with him once before, and I inferred that it would have been when they had first arrived in Brockton Bay, months ago. This mysterious cape was apparently the contact who had supplied most of the equipment that String Theory had needed. This cape had also managed to get them in touch with some particularly useful people, and at competitive prices, or so Gaston had said.

This time we would be buying information from the man and then paying him to contact the capes we had decided on hiring. Gaston and I spent hours brainstorming exactly which capes would have the expertise that we needed to get the job done. Then we made another list of capes that would consider working with us in the first place, there were plenty in the first category, but only three in the second, and neither of us were willing to hire Mannequin.

Besides, he was not even hot.

* * *

We stood on a roof waiting for the cape to arrive, the meeting place was surrounded on three sides by much taller buildings, and the walls were littered with air conditioners and external water pipes.

A single massive billboard stood next to us, facing the street. It served to block us from view, with a large picture of a flat-screen tv proudly on display; big, bold letters spelled out 'High Definition Display.' across the width of the sign. The 'Display.' had been crossed out with paint and replaced by the word 'Penis!'.

I grinned.

The man arrived five minutes after we did, accompanied by several extremely dangerous-looking men. They held dark guns with long barrels and textured grips. Each of their faces was covered by dark glass helmets, and they each wore visible body armor.  
  
The cape stood out like a thumb; he was dressed in a skin-tight black bodysuit that covered him completely. A white snake pattern circled his left leg, his torso, and finished in the middle of his forehead. His moose knuckle was prominently on display, and I stared at it in alarm, had nobody told him?

I was about to call him on it, when Gaston quickly stepped forward, his hand outstretched to shake.

“Coil,” Gaston said cheerfully.

Coil watched the man for a long moment before reaching out and taking it. I made sure to watch the men with the guns; they had turned to follow him with their helmets but made no aggressive movements. Coil pulled his hand back after a moment, and now that the pleasantries had been addressed, he wasted no time in getting straight to business.

"Gaston." Coil said evenly, and I immediately noted that his voice was cold. "I had thought our business complete."

Coil glanced my way for a moment before looking away. I stared at him, completely annoyed; I simply could not believe that I had not thought to name myself ‘Coil’ first. Fuck, I wonder if he would consider trading names with me?

Gaston was as happy as ever; the man clearly had trouble reading the atmosphere, or he might have simply not cared, I am not quite sure. I saw something move from the top of the building on our left, and glanced up for a moment, studying the area. More of Coil’s men, with their guns trained on us from above, damn this guy was paranoid.

"A pleasure to see you." Gaston said, "I find myself in need of your services once again."

Coil watched him silently, and Gaston continued after a moment, filling in some details for the man.

"I need some information. I also need to get in contact with a villain and a rogue outside of Brockton Bay. The villain was last seen in Boston, while the rogue operates in Cambridge. I was hoping you might be able to put me in touch with them."

"Very well," Coil said coldly, "I will assist you. Let us discuss payment."

* * *

Coil did not have the information we needed on hand, but he assured us we would have it no later than tomorrow evening, likely before. That was much quicker than I would have guessed, given how difficult it would have been for me to get it.

I did not know exactly how Coil intended to get the Ward's schedules, but I was guessing he would either need to break in or hack their computers. If his powers did something like that, he would be ideal for our current mission, but Gaston had shut him down when he asked, but not before suggesting that Coil was most likely some type of Thinker.

It was possible that Coil already knew the Wards schedules and was just covering his ass by making us wait; keeping track of the hero's movements was probably a smart move if you were a bad guy that lived in the same city. I had never bothered to track anyone; I was a mercenary now; they would probably no longer ignore me if I started robbing banks and stuff in the city. Maybe I should start keeping track?

Coil agreed to contact both capes on our behalf and implied that we would hear from our potential recruits in two days. The man had not even blinked when he said it either, as if the situation had already been handled, this guy was as cool as a cucumber.

We spent the rest of the day working out how to deal with the bank situation, and we went over what we knew of the layout of the building. Luckily, both of us had been inside the bank before, although it was only one time for each of us. So we had a general idea of where things might be, the part that stood out the most was the area on the first floor that was secured by a metal gate.

Gaston had revealed that there was a staircase behind that gate, which led to a large door. We were both running under the assumption that the vault was somewhere beyond that door, though we would have to improvise if our guess were wrong. The only other part of the bank robbery we could plan was how to get into the vault itself.

We looked up a bunch of images of vault doors online, too try and get an idea of what we were working with. They mostly looked alike with a huge rectangular slab of metal with a big circle in the middle.

The slab was about 10 meters across and at least a meter deep. Hanging off the slab by a large hinge was an enormous circular door, just as foreboding.

I had not the foggiest idea of how to go about opening it sneakily, so we tossed ideas around for the rest of the night, arguing back and forth. We finally settled on either digging under the door or around it by going through the concrete walls, something I was sure I could handle with my power.

We went to bed late that night, and it took me a long while to calm down enough that I could fall asleep. I dreamt of epic battles, witty one-liners, giant doors, and swimming in pools filled with money.

* * *

_Thursday, April 17th. 120 Hours._

I spent most of the next day in a fog; I could not tell you who I sat with at lunch or what the teachers taught in class. My mind was stuck in a loop, flipping over the details of the plan in an endless cycle. I could not stop checking my phone every five minutes for any news from Gaston. When classes finally ended for the day, I raced to the bus stop, as if the bus might ferry me home in an instant, should I only get there in time. I stared at the bus driver, trying to force him to leave early through sheer willpower.

We did not leave for another fifteen minutes.

When I finally arrived home, I found Gaston sitting on the couch, somehow even more impatient than I was. I sat down at the kitchen table and stared at him over my linked hands; Gaston’s left leg bounced up and down unrelenting, we waited.

It was a relief when the call finally came. 5:00 PM, right on the dot. Coil gave us all the Ward's information, shift changes, and additional advice that helped us hammer down an optimal time to start our attack. After Coil had hung up, we finally got down to business, studying what we had learned and put the final details together.  
  
We would attack tonight.

* * *

_Thursday, April 17th. 7:27 PM._

Operation: Break the bank had begun.

A sea of wires darted through the air, and it barely took a modicum of my attention to control them. I used them to pull myself around a corner at a blistering speed; each wire was thin and nearly invisible in the night as they branched out looking for handholds, creating them if none were present.

I did not lose any momentum as I dived across the gap between two tall buildings, and I glanced down at the street below. I could just make out a person walking down the footpath, completely unaware of me passing overhead. I shook my head at the person; walking around unaccompanied after dark was a risky choice.

They were either brave, foolish, or a criminal, but I did not have time to stop and ask which. I was a man on a mission, and Gaston had finally unleashed me upon the city; my dark conquest had begun.  
  
Muah. Ha. Ha.

I leaped over another street before zipping across a series of rooftops and then diving straight down into an alleyway, landing directly behind the Brockton Bay Central Bank. I checked my watch, 7:30 PM.  
  
I was early, whoops.

I looked around the alley for a moment, and a glint immediately caught my eye, under the light on the wall, the lens of a camera, no doubt a part of the bank's security system. Luckily, I was covered from head to toe in my dark costume, with my ridiculously attractive face safely hidden behind my white oval mask.

While I was admiring myself, my earpiece crackled to life, and Gaston's cheery voice drifted over the line.

"Remember the plan!" Gaston said happily, before going over the plan again. "The money is kept in the vault in the basement. You will need to get past it, which will not be easy. It's made of solid steel."

"Yes," I said, annoyed. "Break down the wall before making my way down to the vault. Knockdown the wall next to it, put all the money in the bags, and then run away. I was there when we planned this, Gaston." I gestured wildly with my hands as I spoke.

"Of course!" Gaston said, cheerfully. "But just in case, we should probably go over it one more time-” I quickly reached up and flicked my earpiece off.

Goddammit, Gaston. This had to be revenge for the full-frontal comment.

I checked my watch again, but it was only 7:33 PM. I frowned at my watch. Should I just start early? Gaston was totally underestimating me anyway; I could be in and out of the bank in under a minute, less if I went all out. I did not actually need the ten-minute window we had bought from Coil, although it was certainly useful.

I was sure I could be gone before anybody even noticed I had been here, I mean sure they would figure out what had happened afterward, from the security footage and the gigantic hole in the wall. But I would be long gone before then.

I took a deep breath and restrained myself.

"I am calm," I said serenely, "I am collected." I stood in the alley and watched the clock tick down. "I am a professional."  
  
Follow the plan. Follow the plan. Follow the plan. I repeated it like a mantra, but when the words started to sound like Gaston, I flinched.

"I am the master of my fate." I searched for nirvana. "I am the captain of my soul." I could not find it and the next four minutes seemed to stretch into forever.

My watch suddenly beeped, and a shiver of delight raced up my spine. I took a step towards the wall and with a sweep of my hand, thousands of tiny wires pierced through it before spiraling inwards towards the center of the wall.

The wall remained upright for a long moment, unchanged except for a barely visible pattern carved into its surface. The wall abruptly fell into the building and broken into a million pieces, leaving a pile of debris on the ground.

"Go time," I said gleefully, taking a moment to look up at the camera and give it a jaunty wave.

* * *

_Thursday, April 17th. 7:27 PM._

_Ward's Headquarters_

Triumph stared blearily at the console, trying his best not to fall asleep. He quickly scanned the rooftop cameras again but found nothing. Console duty was always a test of willpower for him; it consisted of long periods of boredom followed by brief moments of excitement.

It was an unfortunate reality that the excitement generally came around when a crime was in progress. He knew he should not be feeling excited when something bad was happening out in the city, but he could not help but enjoy a break in the monotony of staring at the monitors. Ten minutes left before he was finished, he could make it. The three members of the Wards shared the duty between themselves.

Himself, Aegis, and Vista rotated through the shifts every day, while whoever was not on console duty would be sent out to patrol the city in pairs. If a situation became volatile enough to warrant additional backup, they could put the console into an automated state for a short time and review the footage later. It was only allowed in times of emergency, and watching the additional footage was even more boring than watching the live feed.

Triumph yawned long and loud before his mouth shut with a clack of his perfect white teeth.

Recently, there had been talk that another cape would be joining the wards soon, and he seriously looked forward to it. It would split the console duty further, and anything else they could bring to the table was secondary to that, at least in his mind. The first of May was the date when the newest member of the wards was going to be revealed. The only thing he had been able to personally uncover about them was that they were male.

He glanced at the clock and immediately noted that it had barely changed.

Seven more minutes, and he would get to switch out with Vista. He would soon be joining Aegis on patrol if only the damn clock would-. A flash of movement in his peripheral vision drew his attention, and he quickly turned to study the monitors, but there was nothing out of place. Another movement, but he was quicker this time in locating it, and he watched as a figure darted quickly over a rooftop before diving down between two buildings.

The movement continued onto the next monitor and then another before finally coming to a stop in the middle of an alleyway that was wedged between two buildings, facing one of the walls. A light source above and behind the camera illuminated the walls of the building. They were smooth and stretched higher than the camera's frame of reference. Triumph could not quite identify which building it was offhand, but the texture and color of the wall looked vaguely familiar.

The figure was framed slightly left of center on the monitor, his hand placed against his ear. Triumph did not recognize the figure, and it defiantly was not any of the capes that he had personally seen. The costume did not announce who it was, either. If he wanted to know who this was, he would have to try and match a file to the cape database.

He checked the designation of the five monitors, in order of motion. Central Business District Camera #8, #9, #17, #18 and #19. He logged it in the file, under notes before he forgot. They might be able to use it to determine which direction he came from.

The figure was suspicious, and it was obviously a cape, with above baseline agility and at least some small ability to fly, which was more than enough to put them under a Mover classification. The figure’s alignment was unknown, and just looking suspicious was not a crime, after all, so he left it as 'Any.'

The unknown cape idled in the alleyway for a long time, waving his hands back and forth as if he were talking to someone. There was nobody else in the frame, nor a phone in sight. The figure placed his hand against his ear again, and Triumph thought he could safely assume he was using an earpiece.

He eyed the clock briefly; only four minutes left. The figure was tall, stick thin, and wore a mask, a plain white oval. The rest of its head was covered by a dark hood, which was attached to a black coat that hung from the figure's shoulders. The coat was split at the front, a black shirt and pants underneath. Thick black boots peeked out beneath the pants, combat boots of some kind.

He noted the appearance down in the file as 'White Mask,' 'Hooded,' 'Black Cloak,' 'Black shirt,' 'Black Pants,' and 'Black Boots.' Additional details made its way into the notes, full-length sleeves, long pants, no visible armor.

The lack of armor could mean either a lack of resources or a lack of need. Possible Brute rating if it was the latter, he held off putting it in the search parameters but placed it in the notes section just in case.

He added locational details, 'Brockton Bay,' within '100km' distance as the primary and a rough estimate of its height and weight, over six foot, seventy kilos plus. He set the computer to search for a match before glancing at the clock again, two minutes left.

It came to him suddenly; the walls of the Brockton Bay Central Bank were the same color. He practically vibrated in his seat; it was not even that far away. He and Aegis could be there in less than ten minutes. The figure was still talking, and he dearly wished he could hear what was being said, but the camera carried no audio.  
  
The figure suddenly took a step towards the wall.

"Don't even think about it, asshole." Triumph mumbled, glancing over to check the search, it was 90% done.

The figure raised its hand before waving it lazily at the wall, but nothing happened for a moment, so he glanced over at the clock again. Bright red numbers blinked back at him; 7:37 PM, his shift had ended.

Triumph looked back at the monitor just in time for the wall of the bank to suddenly fall inwards.

Aegis and Vista stepped through the door behind him at the exact moment the wall hit the ground. He stared at them for a moment in shock at the timing. The figure turned to look straight at the camera and waved before stepping inside the bank. The computer chimed.

Match Found: Urchin, rogue.

Triumph just stared for a moment disbelieving. The cape's name was Urchin. Urchin, who had known the camera, was there the entire time. Urchin, who knew when the Wards shift change took place. Urchin, who was currently robbing the Brockton Bay Central Bank. Distantly he was aware of the others trying to get his attention.

"Triumph, what's wrong?" Vista said she sounded tired.  
  
Triumph was wide awake.


	3. Chapter 3

Thursday, April 17th. 120 Hours.  
  
I wasted no time inside, immediately taking off a full speed through the building, obliterating any obstacle before me, I sent wires ahead of me threading them into the gaps in the doors and tearing it open with a flex of my power. My lack of regard for the contents of the rooms made it appear as if a cyclone had hit it and I could only assume it was going to get worse from there. I sprinted out the now opened door and past the service counters.  
  
I dragged myself around the next corner and skidded to a stop in front of the gated off section of the bank that we had assume would lead down to the vault. I sent countless wires forward before ripping the entire security gate off with and tossing it across the room. I dragged myself forward down the stone stairs and the thick wooden door that Gaston had told me about came into view, I left the ornately carved door on the floor in half a hundred pieces.  
  
The basement of the bank was a simply but rather large room, inch thick iron bars spanned the width of the entire room, from the ceiling all the way down to the floor. Behind the bars I could see that the room quickly narrowed into a very long hallway and right at the end of that hallway was a massive slab of metal with a perfectly circular indentation.  
  
Bingo.  
  
An loud alarm had started the moment I had passed through into the room with the counters and it was getting progressively louder the closer I got to the vault. I dug wires into the seating of the bars, before quickly tearing them out of the floor. I tossed them across the room before dashing through the gap I had made and sprinted down the hallway. I came to a stop right before the vault door, and it found that it was strangely intimidating in person. How had they even gotten such a massive thing down here in the first place?  
  
The alarms were pretty much deafening me while I was this close to the door, obviously they had done this to try and scare off anyone who managed to get this far, but all it was doing was pissing me off, bastards.  
  
I turned on my heel and started ripping into the left side of the hallway with my power, sending concrete scattering everywhere. I had a second set of wires clearing the debris as I went, shoving it all into the hallway and out of the way. When I was about five meters deep into the wall I spun to the right and begun digging in that direction. Within seconds I could see the far edge of the massive vault slab just peeking through the destroyed concrete, I had barely managed to clear it.  
  
I quickly wedged as many wires as I could between the slab of metal and the much weaker concrete wall. I flexed my telekinetic might and the two walls parted like the red sea. The rubble fell to the ground and I stepped over it to get inside, the interior walls of the vault were lined with golden rectangular indentations. Trays that would roll outwards that were packed deep into the walls, there was multiple isles of the trays each running through the middle of the room in large blocks.  
  
I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my coat and pulled out the tightly wrapped canvas bags that we had prepared earlier. Once they were full each back would be comparable in size to that of a medium sized fridge. I tossed them onto the ground in front of me before raising my hands into the air like an orchestral conductor.  
  
I filled the room with thousands of minuscule wires, and they slipped into the gaps of every single tray in the room, wedging themselves deep inside. I paused for a moment before clapping my hands together and ripped every single tray in the room open at once. I touched a finger to my earpiece to reopen the connection to Gaston, taking a moment to keep him updated on my progress as I used my wires to fill the bags with money.  
  
I used wires to hold the bags aloft, and then a separate set to dump the contents of each tray into the bags one after another in a continuous but highly efficient chain. It did not take long to run out of space in the bags.  
  
"I've got the money, I'm on my way out," I said evenly, feeling like a total badass.  
  
Barely five minutes since had passed since I first entered the bank, and I left the same way I had come in, only with the five now massive bags floating behind me. They were large enough that I had to widen several doorways in order to fit them through easily. On the radio, Gaston was busy singing me praises and I soaked them up like a sponge. The alarm continued its unending racket as I made my way up the stairs, quickly passing by the service counters once more.  
  
At this point, Gaston had started saying 'Who's a good boy? Is it you? Is it?' and I was starting to get pissed off.  
  
"I'm not a fucking dog, asshole," I said thoroughly annoyed, before stepping into the room with the hole I had made into the alleyway.  
  
Laserdream was standing in the middle of the hole, with her hands on her hips.  
  
"Laserdream, thank god you are here." I started bullshitting immediately. "I was just about to call you."  
  
Gaston repeats the name 'Laserdream' over the connection, sounding horrified.  
  
"Uh-huh." Laserdream says, trying not to smile. "Really?"  
  
I nod seriously, forcing myself to relax as I gave her a once over. Oh god, send help.  
  
"This crazy dude blew up the bank!" I continued, trying to gauge her reaction to this piece of shocking news but she merely raises an eyebrow. "I’ve managed to lock him inside the vault, but I don't think it will hold for long."  
  
I realized about mid-way through my tale that Laserdream was actually floating an inch off the ground. Over the radio, Gaston had started to sound like he was on the verge of having a panic attack, it was getting distracting.  
  
"What about those bags?" Laserdream prodded, glancing over my shoulder and back again. I follow her gaze slowly to look at the five giant bags bulging with money.  
  
"I was going to move the money to the other bank, for obvious reasons." I said easily, before slapping one of the bags like it was the roof of a used car. "I couldn't let the crazy dude in the vault steal it all, you know?" I winked at her before realising that she couldn’t see it through my mask.  
  
Fuck it, I was committed at this point, there was no time for shame.  
  
"Totally." Laserdream said amused, "What did you say your name was again?" I most definitely hadn’t given it to her, I thought but didn’t say out loud.  
  
I was distantly aware of a noise coming from the front of the bank, but we both pretended we hadn’t heard it. I actually found myself a little bit annoyed that she hadn’t recognized me on sight, but I suppose fame would come eventually, I would just have to leave a lasting impression on her.  
  
"I'm Aegis, from the Brockton Bay Wards," I tell her confidently and she looks absolutely stunned by my audacity. "I fight crime with my pals, Triumph, and Vista."  
  
What the fuck am I saying? I thought mortified, and Gaston immediately echoed my thoughts through the earpiece.  
  
"I could have sworn that I was Aegis." A third voice says from directly behind me.  
  
Oh no.  
  
I chance a look over my shoulder to find Aegis floating in the middle of the room with his arms crossed. I could just see Vista's head peeking around the door behind him, standing in the room with the counters. I turned back around just in time for Triumph to step out of the alleyway and through the hole in the wall, stopping next to Laserdream, they share a nod in greeting.  
  
Gaston is just yelling nonsense at this point. I take in a deep breath to centre myself before turning to face Triumph, I look him straight in the eyes.  
  
"Triumph, thank god you are here." I say relieved before taking a step towards him. "I found Laserdream trying to rob the bank, you three take her down and I'll get the money somewhere safe."  
  
I try to step around him but his hand clamps down on my shoulder like a vice. That is some strength he has going for him and he does not even look like he is straining yet. I let out a sigh before lowering the bags to the ground behind me.  
  
"Fine, I'll help you take her down," I tell him resignedly. "Be careful though, I've heard she's violent." Laserdream is looking at me like she just can’t even.  
  
With the countless tiny wires I have all over the room I can feel Aegis silently making his way closer to me from behind. For some strange reason I don’t think they are buying it.  
  
"I'm going to have to ask you to come with us." Triumph says evenly, his hand didn’t match his tone as he was still trying to grind my shoulder to dust, I think my lack of reaction to it was making him try even harder and it was really starting to hurt.  
  
I had covered myself in a casing of wire armour the second I had spotted Laserdream. They were hidden beneath my clothes, and I was holding them just above my skin but counteracting the force of his grip without tipping him off was quickly becoming impossible. He was at most seconds away from noticing that something strange was going on so I would have to act soon.  
  
I nod at him in agreement, holding my hands together like I was willing to be cuffed.  
  
"You'll never take me alive, Copper!" I said, filling the room with thin metal rods.  
  
Triumph reacted instantly, letting out a booming shout and suddenly, I was back in the front room. It took me a moment to regain my bearings, and I could feel Aegis tearing his way through my metal forest. Somebody else was wiping entire sections of the wire at a time, and my best guess was that it must have been Laserdream. The moneybags fortunately had been dragged along with me and I realised that I was laying on the ground next to Vista.  
  
"Hey Vista." I groaned, not bothering to get up.  
  
Vista looked down at me in shock, the fight had started so suddenly that she hadn't even reacted properly yet. I quickly wrapped her in hundreds of wires before she could recover and gently stuck her to the wall.  
  
"Hey!" Vista yelled in surprise, struggling in her metal cocoon.  
  
Pleasantries addressed, I started sliding at great speed across the bank floor, pulling myself along with wires, the moneybags zipped along behind me. I covered my head with my arms, briefly reinforcing them with more wire before smashing through the window. The glass at the front of the bank exploded outwards as I crashed through and then suddenly, I was back outside.  
  
Glorious freedom, did you miss me Brockton Bay?  
  
A crimson flash of light lanced out of the bank and then slapped into the wall just beside my head detonating with a blast of kinetic energy, showering me with debris. I yelped and immediately began taking evasive action, I rocketed into the air away from the bank trying to get high enough to get a good view of the area. I made sure to start spreading wires out behind me, far down the street in preparation for my escape.  
  
Triumph came sprinting from around the side of the bank before jumping over the railing and skidding to a stop on the road. His shout had been powerful enough to smash me through a wall, and he also had some kind of super strength judging by the death grip he had on me earlier. He was moving faster then a normal human, so he was probably leveraging that same strength to enhance his agility. I didn't think he was too much of a threat to me on his own, as I was pretty sure I could stay out of the range of his shout and slap him around from a distance with wires.  
  
Aegis on the other hand was more of a problem, as he rocketed straight out the same window I had come from, flying directly at me. He appeared to be a pretty straightforward cape, from what I knew of him. He was fast, strong and was known to continually get back up and continue fighting despite grievous injuries, a standard flying Brute. I reeled myself backwards with my wires, flying up the street away from the guy. I wasn't sure if this was his top speed, but I am able to comfortably maintain the distance between us.  
  
Sorry Aegis, it just wasn't meant to be.  
  
"It's not you, it's me!" I shouted at him and I could see him grimace at the comment.  
  
Triumph was trying valiantly to keep up with us, but he was getting left behind. I could feel the wires keeping Vista trapped suddenly snap under an external force of some kind before Laserdream came blasting out of the bank at about three times the speed of an Aegis.  
  
Holy fuck she was fast.  
  
Laserdream would definitely reach me in a couple of seconds if stayed out in the open. I saw Vista step out of the bank and then suddenly she was next to Triumph. The distance between them vanishing in an instant, before it snapped back a second after she had stepped over some invisible line. It looked weird as heck, and I watched as she repeated the feat once again, my precious distance was suddenly gone. Yikes.  
  
I needed to keep them all in view, I didn't want any sneak attacks taking me down, keeping them all in front of me seemed like a decent safety measure.  
  
Laserdream sent out some more red beams to test me, all of them angled upwards into the sky to avoid any more impacts with the buildings around us and I was managing to weave out of the way with relative ease. I accidently figured out a better solution a moment later, when I held one of the bags up in front of me the next time, she raised her hand to fire.  
  
Laserdream hesitated to take the shot before she lowered her hand, I moved the bag out of the way and she almost went for another shot, but I jiggled the bag in her way again. She stopped shooting at me with an annoyed look on her face I had found her kryptonite, she couldn't just destroy the money after all. At this point, we all seemed to be at a stalemate, but I had a cunning idea.  
  
"Money really is the great equalizer!" I called down to her, and soon Laserdream was grimacing as well.  
  
Tough crowd, huh?  
  
I yanked myself sideways in between two buildings and out of the heroes view, it was time to see just how well Laserdream could corner. I stayed low to the ground and took the next alleyway to the right, heading straight back around towards the bank. The old double back manoeuvre, it was the oldest trick in the book, and it worked every time.  
  
Laserdream didn't even slow down as she came around the first corner, a crimson bubble sprang up just as she was about to hit the wall of the nearest building and she bounced off it with a small spray of debris, but somehow managed to maintain her full speed.  
  
Jesus Christ, I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that I wouldn’t be able to outrun her like this, I was going to need to slow her down somehow. I weaved back and forth down the alleyways and streets on a serpentine-like route back towards the bank, hopefully, the other slower capes lost us along the way.  
  
Laserdream remained hot on my tail, not falling behind at all I would much rather be hot on hers, but beggars couldn't be choosers I suppose. I started setting up wires behind me to give her some distractions, I kept the wires big and meaty, each as thick as a pencil and I made them so obvious that there was no way she would accidentally clothesline herself. I wasn’t trying to kill her after all, just slow her down a bit. The wires stretched from building to building covering a lot of the alleyway, you could practically call them cables at this point, it made more sense given their size.  
  
At first, Laserdream was using her glowing red bubble shield to plough straight through them, but it started to crack after a couple of hits before finally shattering. She was stuck with only two options, either start shooting blasts at me again to clear the wires risking the money or slow down to avoid them entirely. I made the decision for her by jingling the money at her as a reminder and she frowned again before starting to slow down.  
  
I grinned back at her, Checkmate.  
  
I dove around the next corner in glee and Aegis smashed straight into me. It's a head-on collision and he hits me like Truck-kun, but there was no Isekai adventure at the end of this tunnel, only pain.  
  
We tumbled through the air in a tangle of wires, limbs, and testosterone. Aegis got off two good whacks at me during the grapple before kicking me forcibly downwards. I was flung uncontrollably down towards the ground, holding my chest where the hits had landed. I barely managed to catch myself before I went splat on the pavement and I quickly found Aegis coming straight down at me.  
  
Fuck this.  
  
I lashed out at Aegis, wrapping him in so many wires that he wasn't even visible anymore, he just looked like a giant ball of metal yarn. He immediately started to tear through them, so I started doubling the thickness to compensate, and he started to struggle with breaking them as I weaved them together.  
  
I lifted the whole construct upwards and quickly attached hundreds of cables from the ball to the walls of the alleyway. It was a complete mess of metal by the time I had finished, the ball had grown to the size of a small room. I could still feel him slowly breaking his way free, the guy really was unstoppable, but it would take him all night at the rate he was going at it. I could hear him yelling something from within the cocoon, but the words were too muffled to work out what he was saying.  
  
I saw a flash of red out of the corner of my eye, incoming. I reeled myself up and away as Laserdream speared a trio of blasts between me and the shouting cocoon. She was trying to herd me away from the other hero and when I was far enough away, she immediately turned and started to blast him free.  
  
I made good use of the time by doing my best to get the fuck out of there. When Laserdream had finally managed to dig Aegis out, I was long gone.

* * *

It took some effort to stealthily make my way back to the house with the giant bags, but I managed it and Gaston had just about pulled himself together when I arrived. Gaston expressed how amazed he was that I had managed to get away from them, even more so that I had managed to keep a hold of the money. I was just amazed that the bruise on my chest was as small as it was, thank god for my wire armour. Aegis hit stupidly hard, but I guess he could only cover so much surface area at once.  
  
We contacted Coil when we got our bearings, using a portion of our newly acquired money to pay for both his services and to grease the wheels a bit with our potential cape hires. Coil seemed happy enough with the bonus that Gaston added on top.  
  
It was an incredible feeling to pull off something like what we had done today, and it honestly wasn’t even the money. I would do it all again just for the experience, swinging around the city, matching wits against people and fighting other capes, tossing out witty one-liners. I don’t think I’ve had so much adrenaline pumping through my veins since the day I triggered.  
  
This was a much more pleasant rush, and a whole lot less tragedy.  
  
So here I was, laying in my bed and not able to sleep, it really wasn’t that surprising after the day I'd had. It had been like a rollercoaster, exciting and terrifying at the same time it was almost as if I had taken a caffeine shot straight to the heart. All the noise, adrenaline and fighting, now I was just supposed to lay down and sleep? It just wasn’t likely, at least not with all the thoughts running through my head.  
  
Wasn't it funny, that today was probably the most time I had ever spent with kids my own age? What did that say about me, I wondered, when it had only happened because they wanted to capture me?  
  
Kids my age that were outside of school, obviously. Being stuck in a room for eight hours a day only made me resent my peers, there wasn’t anything wrong with them, they hadn’t done anything to me, I just couldn't connect with them. I felt like I had connected more with the Wards and Laserdream in those five minutes we had spent fighting each other, then I had in two years at Arcadia.  
  
How messed up was that?  
  
I laughed at the thought, robbing a bank to save the city. How silly was it that we were doing all of this to save Brockton Bay, but if we pulled it off like we wanted too, nobody would ever know?  
  
Well, nobody except me, Gaston and String Theory. What would happen when we stopped her? Would String Theory just accept her ignoble defeat and go live happily ever after with Gaston? Would she be able to forgive the man for his part in her undoing? Would she turn over a new leaf and become a hero of justice?  
  
I couldn't see it happening, but then again, I had never seen the two of them interact with each other, it was possible that they had the kind of relationship that would allow for something like that to happen. It was worth noting that I still hadn’t even seen String Theory at all, I had no idea what she was like, maybe it _would_ work out like that after all?  
  
I wondered what she was like, what type of person could captivate a man as strange as Gaston? What type of person could instil such a drive in him? I wondered why he would go so far for her, I wasn't delusional, the guy obviously wasn't stopping her so that he could save the city, that was just a side benefit for him. Gaston was saving String Theory from the consequence of her own actions, so that he could selfishly stay next to her. Gaston wanted to stop her, so she didn't doom herself to the birdcage, he wanted to stop her from flying too close to the sun.  
  
Well, the moon in this case.  
  
I was going to help Gaston save her, even if she would hate us for it.


	4. Chapter 4

Friday, April 18th. 96 hours.  
  
Coil contacted us again with a meeting place and time and I made sure to do a quick investigation of the area before the meeting. I skipped school for the day, and caught a bus into town, walking past the area in plain clothes. School was so much less important than potentially saving the city that it really shouldn't have even rated a mention.  
  
There was always the chance that this meeting could go badly, and I was pretty unfamiliar with this part of the city. I needed to know the best ways to get us both out if things went sour, and there was one large problem with the location that kept pulling at my attention. It was really close to the waterfront, barely a street away in fact, and I was having trouble keeping my composure. I always made an effort to stay as far away from large bodies of water as I could manage, and the ocean definitely qualified.  
  
The meeting was happening inside a dirty but otherwise unremarkable alleyway, the only notable feature was a chain link fence that sealed the entire thing off from the street. The only location nearby that I had been too was the southern ferry station, although it had been years since I had been there.  
  
This entire area of the city was covered in high rises, massive rectangular monstrosities that stretched far up into the air, blotting out the sky with their bulk. I was almost sure that if I went up to the roof of the nearest building, I would be able to see the floating fortress in the middle of the bay.  
  
The Protectorate's Brockton Bay headquarters, that's where the big boys and girls were working from. The wards were one thing, and I could deal with them confidently, at least for now, but the Protectorate was an entirely different beast. If you were a naughty cape, those were the capes that you had to worry about coming down on you, and if that wasn't bad enough, they were even known to work alongside New Wave.  
  
After I had thoroughly investigated the location, I returned home confident that we would be able to handle anything that occurred. It was several hours later that I once more returned to the alleyway, only this time I was accompanied by Gaston. It was dark now, the sun having vanished about half an hour ago and the both of us were dressed in dark clothes, to better help us hide if we needed to.  
  
Gaston didn't seem to enjoy the flight over too much, but that might have been because I kept making airplane noises and swinging him around in the air behind me, I couldn't really be sure. I brought us down to the alleyway and then over the chain-link fence. Gaston took a moment to regain his composure and then we stepped around the corner.  
  
The first thing I noticed was that there was a woman standing right in the middle of the alleyway, dominating it with her presence and absolutely impossible to overlook. The woman was tall, six foot if he had to guess, and she stood with her hands on her hips, looking completely confident. She was wearing a bright white bodysuit that covered her entire body all the way up to her neck while her face was covered by a partial mask of the same colour that left her mouth uncovered. The woman's bright blonde hair spilled down her back, with a surprising amount of volume to it. The most notable feature she possessed was the massive shit-eating grin that sat easily on her face. This cape was obviously the villain, Size Queen.  
  
Gaston walked straight up to the potentially dangerous woman and shook her hand without any sign of hesitation. I couldn't tell if he was fearless or just insane, but it was probably some combination of both. I was able to relax minutely when she didn't immediately destroy him.  
  
"No sign of Quest?" I asked curiously, stepping up next to Gaston, I didn't bother offering my hand.  
  
Size Queen gave me a quick look over, before jerking her head behind herself.  
  
"She's hiding behind that dumpster over there." Size Queen said confidently, and I leaned around her shoulder to have a look.  
  
"Ah!" A voice said from behind the bin, "I wasn't hiding! I just got here."  
  
We all waited for a moment, but the owner of the voice didn't emerge.  
  
"Um, are you going to come out?" I asked strangely, after the awkward pause.  
  
"Of course I will." The voice said, as if she was about to do just that, only she continued to stay behind the bin.  
  
Gaston strode around Size Queen and towards the bin with his hand outstretched in front of him the entire way. It looked vaguely intimidating and his body language screamed, 'I want to shake your hand!'  
  
"Pleased to meet you, Quest!" Gaston said cheerfully and a hand emerged from behind the bin.  
  
Gaston seized it without hesitation, pumping it up and down enthusiastically.  
  
"Let's discuss the job, shall we?" Gaston prompted.  
  
"Yes." Quest said nervously, before stepping out from behind the bin.  
  
Quest followed Gaston back over to us, her hands were clasped in front of herself. I couldn't help but notice that her body language was spectacularly awkward. She was extraordinarily short, a couple of inches below five foot at best, and her shoulder-length black hair was cut straight across her forehead, with longer bangs that framed the side of her head. She was pretty in a sort of plain way, with rather large eyes and a small nose. She was dressed in a white lab coat, a slightly different shade of white then Gaston's own and it hung down around her ankles looking huge on her small frame. Underneath it, she wore a black sweater and a simple pair of blue jeans. Her mouth was covered by a black mask that wrapped around her ears with a piece of elastic on both sides.  
  
I stared down at her strangely, the height disparity between us was incredible. I bent forward at the waist to get a closer look at her feet before raising an eyebrow incredulously.  
  
"Are you wearing flip flops?" I asked bemused, and Quest looked down at her feet as if to check for herself, she wiggled her toes nervously.  
  
"Yes?" Quest said hesitantly, looking rather embarrassed as she wrung her hands together.  
  
"Okay then. Cool." I said amused before turning to Gaston, "Shall we get this show on the road?"  
  
Gaston beamed at me and I had to look away from his cheerful radiance.  
  
"Yes, lets." Gaston clapped his hands once, and Quest jumped a foot in the air at the sudden noise. "I would like to hire you both for a rather delicate task."  
  
"Mm. Go on." Size Queen said easily, joining the discussion once more.  
  
"Unfortunately, I can't tell you the exact details of the job until I have you both onboard." Gaston continued, looking apologetic. "I'm afraid you'll have to decide if you want to participate somewhat blindly."  
  
Quest wrung her hands together again, seemingly even more nervous than before, clearly worried that we might want her to agree to something terrible, she was a Rogue, not a villain like Size Queen.  
  
"It's a sneak job, right?" Size Queen guessed, not seeming too bothered by the idea. "I can't see why you would hire me if it wasn't."  
  
"You are correct, but there are several things we aim to accomplish. One of which requires utmost secrecy."  
  
Gaston nodded to Size Queen, indicating that he was addressing her in particular.  
  
"I will need you to infiltrate a very heavily defended building." Gaston explained cheerfully, "If you are detected in any way, it will be an instant mission failure and the consequences to which will be most dire."  
  
Size Queen nodded in understanding, still seemingly unbothered and Gaston turned to nod at Quest.  
  
"Quest," Gaston said happily, and the short woman hunched even further down as everyone turned to look at her. "Your task would be to take control of a very important computer, without alerting the owner, this also needs to be done without alerting anyone."  
  
Quest nodded hesitantly, not yet finding anything morally objectionable about the request.  
  
"I cannot stress enough, that if we are detected during either event," Gaston said seriously, "a lot of innocent people are going to die."  
  
Quest immediately started looking worried again, and even Size Queen had crossed her arms defensively.  
  
"Why will people die?" Size Queen asked bluntly. "I'm a thief who occasionally beats people up, I am not a killer."  
  
Quest nodded in support of the sentiment; even though she wasn't any of the things the taller woman had listed. Gaston hesitated, not quite sure how to phrase it without giving anything away.  
  
"Look," I said bluntly, drawing everyone's attention to me. "We aren't the bad guys here."  
  
Gaston wisely didn't correct me on the technicality, seeing as he was actually a bad guy a couple of days ago, and I was in fact a mercenary, which was illegal.  
  
Size Queen raised an eyebrow at my contribution to the talk.  
  
"I can't tell you exactly what is going on." I continued, "But three days from now a lot of people are going to die."  
  
"The job we are hiring you for is to stop that from happening." I finished evenly, staring them both down.  
  
God damn, I was an inspiration to everybody around me, I would have been such a badass hero. Quest surprisingly was the first to speak up after my interruption.  
  
"Are we expected to fight during our employment?" Quest said hesitantly, as if she were interviewing for a job at the grocers.  
  
Gaston hummed thoughtfully for a moment before he answered.  
  
"While I wish that it weren't the case, it is highly likely that combat will occur at some point. You will both be expected to fight should the need arise." Gaston explained, stroking his chin.  
  
" _Can_ you fight?" I asked Quest, curiously.  
  
As far as I knew, she was a Thinker and not the combat kind. Given how short she was, I was having difficulties picturing her fighting anyone other than a child, and the flip flops weren't helping the image.  
  
"Not really." Quest mumbled nervously, "I have a taser?" She phrased it like a question, to which I didn't have an answer, Huh.  
  
I looked to Size Queen raised an eyebrow in question, I had seen the videos, but I wanted to hear her say it.  
  
"Sure. If we have to fight, I'll handle it." Size Queen said easily. "There is a combat pay bonus right?"  
  
Gaston nodded cheerfully, and the three of them spent the next several minutes discussing payment, duties, and expectations. Size Queen haggled up to almost double the starting amount and Gaston let her drive it up without much push back. Once they had come to an agreement Gaston transferred their payment's from his phone.  
  
When they were done, Gaston turned to Quest, and the short woman immediately asked for the same amount. Gaston accepted the price without issues, and our mountain of money just became a small hill.  
  
"Well boss, what's the job?" Size Queen asked.  
  
"Ah, it will take a while to explain," Gaston said optimistically, "I'll explain everything when we get back to the base."  
  
Yeah, we couldn't stay here all night, and the proximity to the ocean was starting to set my teeth on edge, wait a minute.  
  
"The base is my house." I said suddenly, "We can't take these two with us."  
  
Somehow, we hadn't considered this until now, it was a glaring oversight, and now we would have to hire them a room in the city or something, more money down the drain, it physically sickened me.  
  
"Who's this guy anyway?" Size Queen asked confidently.  
  
I opened my mouth to respond but she just talked right over me.  
  
"Is he troubling you, boss? Want me to knock him out?" Size Queen said cheekily, and I stared at her in disbelief. "We can deal with him back at the base."  
  
Gaston looked like he was considering it too, scratching his chin in thought. Bastard. Quest just looked worried at the byplay.  
  
"What's your power?" Size Queen smirked.  
  
Fuck it, I sprouted some wires and waved them around.  
  
"Oh." Size Queen said sadly, before looking over to Gaston with a expression of understanding on her face.  
  
"I can see why you needed my help." Size Queen said put her hand on Gaston's shoulder in sympathy, "You've had it pretty rough huh?"  
  
I was left standing with my mouth open, unable to believe the balls on this woman.  
  
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" I snapped, "You god damned Amazonian!"  
  
Size Queen checked her fingernails calmly, not even bothering to look my way.  
  
"What do you even bring to the table?" Size Queen taunted, "Now that I'm here, do we even need you anymore?"  
  
This. Bitch. I was getting roasted here, I needed to do something to retake control of the situation.  
  
"I'm out of your league lady." I declared imperiously. "Totally and completely."  
  
I was an A-lister easily; this small timer was B-tier on her best days.  
  
"Out of my league huh?" Size Queen laughed, "Why don't we test that?" Before she suddenly started to grow.  
  
Gaston was trying and failing to get us to settle down. Too late, motherfucker, my reputation was on the line. I was going to kick her ass; I knew I could do it too. It was a matter of information and power disparity; we had researched all the known information about the two capes meanwhile Size Queen had no idea who I was, she was flying completely blind.  
  
Size Queen's power was a form of self-biokinesis, that allowed her to grow bigger or smaller. She was able to grow everything at once, or different parts of her body individually, she could grow to about eight feet tall, with six times her body weight. She could also shrink to about thirty centimetres and at that height she would weigh in at about ten kilograms. I was curious about where the extra mass went when it wasn't in use.  
  
That was all the publicly available information about her power, she had been around for several years and had a pretty successful career, all things told. There were a couple of videos of her fighting with other capes, but her focus was theft, and she was responsible for hundreds of heists.  
  
In combat she used her power to bulk up, right now she currently stood around seven feet tall and her muscles bulged beneath her skin. Each of her arms was the size of my torso around the thickest section, she was totally jacked, and I down think I had even seen a person so large. It was also very strange having to look up at someone, as almost everybody I had met was shorter than me.  
  
When she had first started to grow, I had expected her costume to rip open, but it had simply stretched to accommodate her new size. I cursed whoever had made her such a stretchable suit and denied us all at what could only be an interesting view. Hilariously enough, her head remained the same size as it normally was, and she looked completely ridiculous because of it. There was a joke there about growing a brain, but I couldn't quite reach it. This wasn't the time to make fun of her appearance anyhow, not when I had a gigantically muscled ass to kick.  
  
Besides, I had immediately noticed a problem with her current form.  
  
"Still want to go, scaredy-cat?" Size Queen cackled, staring down at me with a shit-eating grin on her tiny face.  
  
I forced myself to relax, affecting a look of something who was completely safe.  
  
"You will never, ever defeat me with that form," I said calmly, completely at ease.  
  
I was slowly generating wires underneath my costume, weaving it around into a armoured bodysuit.  
  
"But why, it's so strong?" Size Queen asked curiously.  
  
Gaston and Quest had skedaddled behind the dumpster, they were both currently peeking out from behind it to watch the dick swinging contest.  
  
"Oh yeah." I agreed easily, "In raw power? It can't be beat."  
  
She had finally noticed my Armor as it crept up my neck, now clearly visible. She tilted her head to the side, possible updating her view on whatever she had guessed my power to be. It was now time to baffle her with bullshit, my _true_ superpower.  
  
"But the amount of concentrated energy causes an extreme expansion in mass, the body can't compensate." I lectured, "And while you'll see a fifty percent power _increase_ , you'll see a seventy-five percent _decrease_ in speed and mobility."  
  
"What?" Size Queen said flabbergasted.  
  
My armour had slipped under my mask and finished covering my head.  
  
"You'd never hit your opponent." I cracked my neck confidently. "In layman's terms, you can't hit me."  
  
Size Queen's grin vanished at my taunt and she stomped forward with her massive hand stretched out to take hold of me.  
  
Five minutes later she still hadn't managed to lay a hand on me. I always made sure to maintain a couple of meters distance, because that was a definitely a lose condition in our little tussle. I dragged myself out of the way of her hand again, staying just out of her reach. She would switch in some leaps every now and then trying to juke close enough to grab me, but I could see them coming from a mile away.  
  
Size Queen was starting to get pissed off, and her tiny head was becoming quite red.  
  
"Stop running away you little pussy!" Size Queen yelled, stamping her foot on the concrete apparently having quite the tantrum.  
  
She was playing it up a lot I was sure, there was no way she was genuinely this mad, actually I had better test that just in case.  
  
"I've been chased by hookers that run faster than you!" I taunted.  
  
Size Queen looked appalled for a second, before a look of confusion overtook her face as she attempted to work out if that was an insult or not. Hopefully, she would tell me when she figured it out, because I had no idea what the hell I had just implied.  
  
I was currently reclining in a tangle of wires as if it were a chaise lounge, stretching languidly and making sure that she knew exactly how large the power gap was between us. I was well out of the reach of the ground, completely safe from even her towering height. I glanced down at her and let out a loud yawn.  
  
Size Queen looked so mad at this point that I was struggling to keep it together. I gave her the come-hither gesture and it tipped her over the edge. She snarled and hopped backwards to grab the dumpster that the other two were still hiding behind, before lifting it into the air with no difficulty whatsoever. Gaston and Quest covered their heads with their hands as they ran further up the alleyway. I watched in amusement as they both stuck their heads back around the corner to watch us duke it out.  
  
Size Queen lobbed the dumpster at me with a shout and I caught it straight out of the air without even trying. I made a show of winding up before tossing it back towards her at twice the speed and she let out a startled yelp before diving out of the way.  
  
It made a terrible racket as it scraped and screeched along the walls before it smashed straight into the far wall and continued straight through into the building. We all stopped to stare at the massive hole in the brick wall for a moment in horror.  
  
Whoops.  
  
There was a bunch of yelling coming from the building and even out on the street. The sound of sirens almost immediately started up barely a street away from our position, and we quickly decided as a group that we should probably get the fuck out of there.  
  
I led everyone back to base despondently, I suppose that I could always sell my apartment and move somewhere else. I would just need to keep my mask on while in the house, and make sure to hide anything with my name on it.  
  
If anyone came here looking for Urchin in the next couple of months, I would track them both down and kick their asses. Then I would hand-deliver them to the Protectorate, I made sure to tell them as much. Size Queen had immediately given me the biggest middle finger I have ever received in my entire life. Quest at least seemed to take my threat seriously, judging by her nervous expression.  
  
Gaston explained everything to them once we were safely inside, and I took the time to run around my apartment hiding anything that would identify me. They were both shocked that String Theory was attempting to blow up the moon, such a thing sounded fantastical.  
  
Size Queen was quite pissed off that we had baited them both into a city that was probably going to explode at some point. Quest was more curious about the bombs and how we were going to get access to the computer. We discussed the plan that we had come up with, and together we worked out the kinks until it was shiny and new. We also set up some clear objectives for each of them.  
  
Quest would start designing a program that would allow her to take over the computer and stop the bombs from exploding. She would be putting the program on a portable device that could be inserted into the computer on site. Everything would look normal to String Theory, but the computer would be completely disconnected from the bombs and they would be rendered harmless. If anybody used the computer to detonate the bombs it wouldn't have anything to connect to and instead simply do nothing. The physical location of the three bombs was most likely being monitored in some way, so we would leave the clean-up of the bombs until after we had captured String Theory.  
  
Size Queen would be taking Quest's program, and then infiltrating String Theories base. Once inside she would stick Quest's program in and take control of the computer. She would hide until Quest was finished disconnecting the bombs before exfiltrating and returning to base.  
  
Simple and easy, it was the perfect solution. Should all parts go according to plan the three bombs would no longer be a threat, then we can plan out how to take down the guards, capture String Theory, and destroy the G-Driver. Once we have captured String Theory, we could just drop an anonymous tip to the Protectorate telling them about the leftover bombs, which takes another issue off our hands.  
  
We started to wrap up our strategizing for the day and we quickly realized that we have exactly one couch and one bed. Gaston sends me out to grab a couple of blow-up mattresses, which solves our issue.  
  
When I get back, I found Size Queen laying upside down on the couch and kicking her legs in the air. I toss the package of blow-up mattresses so that they land on her face.  
  
"UP! GUNTA UP!" I scream at her and Size Queen immediately uses her power to start growing bigger and knocks the couch over as she tries to grab me.  
  
I immediately run and hide behind Gaston in the kitchen, and Size Queen scowls at me before giving me the 'I'm watching you' gesture. Gaston tells me that Quest has commandeered my computer to begin working on the program.  
  
"This makes me incredibly uncomfortable," I tell him seriously, realizing that my identity is a bust by this point.  
  
I'll just have to hope she doesn't check my browser history; I idly note that Size Queen has a very malicious look on her face.  
  
"MAKE SURE TO CHECK HIS BROWSER HISTORY!" Size Queen yells at the top of her lungs, and I stare at her in horror.  
  
This. Bitch.


	5. Chapter 5

Saturday, April 19th. 72 Hours.  
  
When I woke up the next day, I found that Gaston had once again woken up before me and was currently halfway through making us all breakfast. Size Queen had joined him at the kitchen table with her head resting on it, still mostly asleep. Quest, or what I thought was Quest was passed out on one of the mattresses, a large hump under the blankets denoted her location.  
  
Gaston delivered us the majesty of a freshly cooked breakfast and piping hot coffee, truly he was the best boss I've ever had.  
  
"Should we wake Quest up?" I asked leadingly, while doing my best to fight through a yawn. "She might be hungry."  
  
"She only went to sleep about half an hour ago," Gaston replied cheerfully. "She was up all night finishing the program, and she ate something before she went to sleep."  
  
Gaston gives me his smiley egg special, I return the smile, delicious.  
  
"She finished it in one night?" I asked curiously.  
  
Huh, maybe we are all badass in our own unique ways, the more you know.  
  
Gaston nods happily while filling up Queen's own plate, her head was still on the table, so I sneakily flipped her bacon around, it was very unhappy to see her. She spotted it immediately when she lifted her head up, before looking over at mine and pouting.  
  
We spoke about nothing serious over breakfast, silently agreeing to stay away from anything important. Eventually we all finished eating and one of us finally brought up something related to the job and it was all work after that. We went over what we knew of the facility and the last known layout of the building. It quickly spins off into a side discussion over what type of staff or personnel would be inside the building today and what exactly they would be doing.  
  
Size Queen took control of the conversation and grilled Gaston about every detail he could remember. I couldn’t help but noticed that she was touching on some of the most bizarre stuff, why would she need to know who took the most frequent bathroom breaks? To me, it wasn't worth considering, but I guess this was why she was the expert at sneaking around, and I'm just the expert at beating people up. I managed to hold myself back from derailing the conversation, as this was important and if we didn’t get this part right, thousands of people were going to die.  
  
Size Queen stole one of my empty schoolbooks and started marking things out on its surface. She asked probing questions about the building; How big was it? How many floors did it have? What is the floorplan's general shape? Where are the highest traffic areas? Is there access via the roof? How was the computer defended? Where there any emergency doors or escape routes from the room itself? Was there a basement level, underground tunnels, sewer pipes, ceiling vents, windows, doors, access points, and a million more minutia.  
  
Size Queen clearly knew her shit and Gaston had become nothing more than a resource to be drained of any useful information. She methodically mapped out the physical defences, the locations of the computer, guards, mounted guns and cameras on the notepad. After several hours we finally whittled our choices down to three types of entry.  
  
We had located a blind spot directly in the middle of the roof, a result of having all of the rooftop cameras towards the ground, although there were on the top of the roof access pointed at the roof itself. The only way to get in from there without being see would be to drop straight down from above. Land in between the three cameras on the access point and then climb down to the doorway, we will call that option one.  
  
Option two was a series of maintenance tunnels that Gaston was aware of that apparently spread out beneath the city, one of which crossed under the building about thirty feet below the basement level. I could cut through the roof of the tunnel the same way I had at the bank, although the noise could possibly alert them. Size Queen quickly pointed out that we had no information about the basement floor of the building other that its existence, unfortunately. So this idea would be quite risky.  
  
Option three was apparently to walk in through the front door as if she worked there. I'm not even kidding, I thought she was saying it for the memes at first but then she insisted that she had once walked straight into a building, with a hat and a clipboard, completely unmolested. The balls on this woman must have clanged together whenever she walked.  
  
Roof, Tunnel, Front door, our three options lay before us, a simple roll of the dice away.  
  
While we are deliberating on which approach to go with, Gaston mentioned that there were less than fifteen people that work for String Theory in all, not including the security team. Enough that a new person that nobody had seen before would be pretty suspicious. Gaston personally thought that Size Queen would get noticed immediately, if she tried to just wander in and I agreed with him completely. So together we voted her off the island and now she’s pouting again, she does that a lot.  
  
Roof or Tunnel. Top or bottom, curious and curiouser.  
  
Size Queen wondered aloud if I could cut through thirty feet of stone quietly enough not to alert anyone and it was something, I had already had doubts about, I really wasn’t sure. If we decided on it, we would need to test it somewhere else first. She was also not entirely happy with coming up through the floor with zero knowledge of what was above her.  
  
I was honestly ambivalent about the choice, but Gaston was taking her fears seriously, so we table that option for now. Gaston pointed out that we would need to be very high in the air in order to avoid the camera's on the roof and even higher to avoid any guard's natural line of sight. He didn't think I could do it for some reason, apparently, he was under the impression that I could only fly while close to something that I could tether too. What on earth had given him that idea?  
  
"Hold on, I'm not locked to the ground or whatever," I tell him, bemused. "I could literally just wrap myself in wires and fly off whenever I want."  
  
Gaston looked incredulous at the news.  
  
"I've never seen you fly more than ten feet off the ground." Gaston argued, "You are always tethered to something and you drag yourself around like you are holding yourself up with wires."  
  
"Obviously. I don't want everyone in the city knowing exactly how my power works." I said slowly like he was an idiot, and he was quickly starting to look pissed off.  
  
Size Queen looked between us curiously, having yet to see one of our frequent dick swinging contests.  
  
"You could have just flown away from the bank, straight up in the air." Gaston accused, pointing at my face with an angry finger. "Instead you stayed on the ground and got beat up."  
  
"Why the hell would I fly straight up?” I said incredulously, "New Wave or fucking Purity or someone might take a shot at me."  
  
Gaston opens his mouth to fire back another retort when Size Queen claps him on the shoulder.  
  
"Boys, boys." Size Queen said amused, "We are getting side-tracked."  
  
Gaston shuts his mouth with a snap. Dumbass.  
  
"Tell me more about this flying business." Size Queen says curiously, "I've always wondered what it would be like to fly."

* * *

It looked like she was regretting the comment.  
  
"Up, up, and away, away from me," I sang horribly, "But it's alright!"  
  
"It's not alright!" Size Queen shouted before she punched me in the back of the head, "You can't sing for shit, dumbass!"  
  
I tumbled uncontrollably for a moment through the air before I managed to correct my course. I dragged her further away from me and let her dangle underneath me as we flew.  
  
"You can all sleep soundly tonight!" I sang, ignoring her completely. "I'm not crazy or anything!"  
  
"Jesus Christ!" Size Queen bellowed up at me. "Please just stop!"  
  
"I can't stand to fly, I'm not that naive!" I just sang louder, "Men weren't mean to ride, with clouds between their knees!"  
  
This was it, the moment where we would either save the city or get caught and cause the death of thousands.  
  
I know, I know.  
  
Why are we fuck-assing around during a stealth mission? It wasn't as bad as it sounds, I promise. The wind was reducing our volume to pretty much nothing so it wasn't as loud as it could have been. We were also about fifteen thousand feet above the city and it was 9:57 pm. Ergo, it was dark as shit, but it was also cold, really, really cold.  
  
I would need to get something warmer to wear if I ever did this again. Size Queen was definitely feeling the cold, there were two big indicators that I couldn’t help but comment on.  
  
"Hey, Queen!" I called down to her and Size Queen looked up at me. "Is it just me or is it a bit nippy outside?!" I yelled, pointing at her chest.  
  
Size Queen glanced down and then went ape shit. Her hand suddenly swelled to a truly gigantic size, shuffling almost all of her possible mass into her arm and then tried to slap me out of the air. I barely managed to drop her down out of range before she hit me, but it was a close one.  
  
It was totally worth it, as I watched her tumble through the air for a couple of seconds before I managed to catch her again.  
  
"Asshole!" Size Queen yelled up at me, quickly giving me the finger before her hand reduced back to a normal size.  
  
Geez, violent much it almost took physical effort to hold back from telling her to 'chill out’ and that we wouldn't want to 'tip' off the enemy, heh. The earpiece crackled to life and Gaston's voice came floating over the connection.  
  
"Alright, it's time to start the mission." Gaston said cheerfully. "Everybody's ready?"  
  
"Ready." Size Queen gave an affirmative, previous annoyance forgotten.  
  
"Good to go," I said easily.  
  
"Quest?" Gaston inquired. "Take it away please."  
  
When Quest woke up earlier, she had immediately begun the process of trying to gain access to String Theories base via my computer however apparently nearly every part of the security system was compartmentalized. The doors were electronic and were kept on a separate network than the cameras, which were on a different network from the automated weapons systems.  
  
This made it very unlikely that she would be able to subvert any meaningful portion of the security system in a useful amount of time. So in order to try and assist Size Queen with infiltrating, the best she could do on such short notice was to access the camera feed and relay relevant information to her, about guard movements and maybe unlock a couple of doors.  
  
"Yes." Quest said quietly. "I've managed to access the cameras. I'll keep you updated on any patrols or any useful information that I find."  
  
"Sweet," Size Queen said excitedly, "I'm feeling spoilt. Usually, it's just me and my beautiful self."  
  
I snorted at the brag and made sure to stay out of her range as she gave me the side-eye.  
  
"You're almost directly over the building now Urchin." Quest said quietly. "You can start descending now."  
  
"Roger, roger," I replied in a robotic voice.  
  
I dropped about ten-thousand feet in the next two minutes, slowly making my way downwards. No more horsing around or loud noises as we got closer and closer to the target. When we reached about one-thousand-five-hundred feet above the building I began to quickly lower Size Queen with a cable about as wide as a pencil.  
  
Size Queen had already shrunk down to her smallest size, and I could barely feel the weight of her on the wire. I felt my cable brush the rooftop and I quickly unwrapped it from around her.  
  
The small weight of Size Queen abruptly disappeared, she was in.

* * *

The two hours spent waiting for Size Queen was both the most relaxing and stressful time of my life.  
  
I sat cross-legged in the air, floating above the city, at a street-level Brockton Bay had always looked worn down and gritty but from up this high in the sky, I almost thought it was beautiful.  
  
There were light sources everywhere I looked, the kind that would usually blend into the background once you'd gotten used to living in a city with lights on every corner. From up here, the river of lights was like a reflection of the stars far above. The densely packed areas like downtown and the Highrise district were quite the sight. Each of the blocky monstrosities had hundreds of lights each, staggering their way up the buildings in irregular patterns, the windows of each apartment either lit or note, depending if the occupants were awake.  
  
The city showed an obvious gradient that smoothly changed as it crossed the city, from bright and dense, to dark and sparse. The shantytown was colourful and messy, while the downtown was bright and almost clinically lit, it stretched high above the rest of the city. The docks were very poorly lit and the trainyards were even darker still. The waterfront itself was a large strip of light, from one side of the city to the other. The ocean sparkled in the lights and I could see the partially sunken ships glinting as they emerged from the water, like giant metal hands clawing at the sky.  
  
The Protectorate's base floated serenely in the bay, a massive luminescent bubble atop it, the sheer size was intimidating even from this distance. It was surrounded by the ocean, and I repressed a shiver at seeing so much water in one place. I looked upwards and watched the moon as it hung uncaring in the sky, surrounded by millions of glittering stars. This close to the deadline it was large, bright and almost completely full.  
  
String Theory's masterpiece would only be revealed when it was at its zenith, when it was completely full and dominated the sky, just to make it that much more beautiful when she tore it from the sky. I couldn't imagine what the destruction would look like, would it cover the sky in celestial fragments? Would the moon simply vanish from sight with naught but a whimper?  
  
As I sat in the sky underneath the stars, staring up at the moon, I wondered if this was how String Theory's obsession had started.  
  
I almost wanted to see it.

* * *

Quest had moved the thief into a private channel with just the two of them, to ensure that nothing would distract her at a crucial time. Probably a good idea, I've always had trouble engaging the filter between my brain and my mouth.  
  
I had since moved back up to a safer height, straight up into the air above the base. I needed to be close enough for a fast extraction if something went wrong, so I couldn't keep too much distance from the building.  
  
My earpiece abruptly crackled to life.  
  
"Andy," Gaston said happily, "Size Queen's headed for the roof, get ready for extraction the bombs are disconnected."  
  
I smiled at the success and let myself drop straight downwards. The wind rushed past me and I had to stop myself from laughing at the thrill. The city was rapidly increasing in size as I fell, and I speared a single wire downwards to stop just as it touched the roof, before thickening it to a cable. I felt the now-familiar weight of Size Queen's miniature form grab onto it tightly. I reeled her up quickly and threaded wires through her harness as she slowly grew back to a normal size, I pumped the gas and we zipped up into the air.  
  
Size Queen was laughing as we darted upwards, flush with victory and when I brought her level with me, I couldn't help but join in. I started to really put on the speed and dragged us up into a victory lap of the city, grinning the entire time. We cheered and yelled and surprisingly enough nobody chased us or shot us out of the sky, it almost felt like freedom.  
  
When we finally landed on the roof of my apartment building Gaston and Quest were waiting for us. Size Queen was still grinning brightly from the rush of our flight. Quest had a small satisfied smile on her face and Gaston looked happier than I had ever seen him. When we reached them, Gaston dragged all of us into a group hug.  
  
Quest squeaked and Size Queen laughed as she dragged me in. I pretended to put up a fight before I let myself get smushed between them.  
  
Mission accomplished, I felt content.

* * *

We celebrated our success by ordering a bunch of fast food and Gaston picked up the bill but later stated that it was coming out of our bonuses, the bastard. We spent the rest of the night joking and messing around with each other. At some point, I realized that we needed a name. Like 'The Titans' or 'The Z Warriors' or something way cooler like 'Armoured Squadron'.  
  
"We don't really need one." Size Queen said easily, "It's not like we're a permanent team."  
  
"I know that." I argued, "But we should still call ourselves something. So everyone knows when they are about to get their asses kicked."  
  
I wanted a cool name dammit.  
  
"It seems a little silly," Quest added, she was decidedly less nervous than usual. "We're only together for a couple more days, after all."  
  
I felt a twinge in my chest at that and Quest turned to glance at Gaston, as if he would suddenly reveal we were all trapped forever and could never leave, that's what I thought the look was anyway.  
  
Gaston just smiled mysteriously; I'd have to put my foot down.  
  
"Too bad!" I yelled at the top of my lungs, jumping onto the kitchen table and knocking things everywhere.  
  
Gaston yelped when I knocked over his coffee and Quest slid her chair backward with a single sharp 'Ah!', she managed to avoid getting splashed. Size Queen swiped lazily at my leg, but I managed to gracefully avoid it, like the god damned ninja I was.  
  
"Assemble!" I yelled, unfazed by the attempted mutiny. "Full Frontals!"  
  
The reveal of our amazing team name was only met with silence.  
  
"No way, dumbass," Size Queen said bewildered, immediately trying to shut me down. "That's the stupidest name I've ever heard."  
  
I crossed my arms and looked down my nose at her before turning to Quest and raising my eyebrow, the awkward woman fidgeted under the attention.  
  
"Um. It's not a particularly good name." Quest said quietly.  
  
I couldn't believe, this, this betrayal!  
  
"I never expected you to betray me Quest," I said sadly. "I thought we had something special?"  
  
I sniffled a bit and she looked uncomfortable at the implication. The others tried to argue against having a name, but they soon gave up. They did try and switch tactics for a bit, hoping to convince me of 'better' names, but I remained steadfast. They gave up eventually and it was made official.  
  
The Full Frontals were going to save the world, Gaston looked annoyed.


	6. Chapter 6

Sunday, 20th April. 48 Hours.  
  
The original plan was for Quest to spend the rest of the day trying to subvert more the facility defences. The more of the facility we managed to gain control over, the more likely we would succeed. That had been the idea anyway, she had immediately run into a problem.  
  
My computer just wasn't good enough for Quest to accomplish everything she needed, this was why Quest and I were currently planning Operation: Steal a Bunch of Computers. A cooler name was pending, but the main idea was sound, we would go to the nearest Best Buy and steal a bunch of computers.  
  
Incredible, I know.  
  
I asked Size Queen if she wanted to help us and she told me in no uncertain terms that she would not be tarnishing her professional reputation by stealing from fucking Best Buy of all places. I tried talking Gaston into making her help us, mostly just too piss her off at this point. The bastard had instead given her the day off because she had done such a great job last night.  
  
Quest and I left my apartment building around ten, heading for a bus stop. We ended up having to take one that was much farther away than my normal choice, as there was a bunch of roads closed off and no vehicles were allowed through. Something about one of the maintenance tunnels collapsing and needing maintenance, the irony of it all.  
  
We had decided that we were not going to bother with stealth this time, this was simply going to be a quick raid, get in and get out. Whatever we took wouldn't have anything to do with String Theory's plan, so being seen by anyone didn't really matter in the long run. We were just going to wander in, kick everyone out and take what we needed.  
  
Quick and efficient, Gaston gave us his blessing.  
  
Eventually, we did find a bus into town and we boarded without issue. We both dressed in plain clothes, while our costumes were tucked away in a pair of backpacks. Quest had a white cough mask covering her face, so I still hadn’t managed to get a full look at her face yet much to my dismay. I didn't bother covering my face at all, I was quite sure she already knew exactly what I looked like, having had access to my computer since we hired her. I didn’t think she would attempt to sell me out, she seemed far too nice to do something like that.  
  
We got off the bus in the middle of downtown and strangely enough there was even more foot traffic than normal. I overheard some people talking about some kind of fundraiser on the bus, so I guess that was the reason.  
  
Quest and I made a strange sight walking through the city together. I had always been tall, and my height had come from my mother, she had been one of the tallest women I'd ever seen, approaching seven foot. I had a vague memory of her handing dad something off a high shelf, who had only been five and a half foot on his best days, the difference between them had been large.  
  
The difference between Quest and I was probably worse. At fifteen years old, I was already taller than ninety percent of most adults, and I didn’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing down. Whereas my mother had looked like a normal woman scaled up to a bizarrely tall height, I was absurdly skinny with long gangly limbs. I looked like a stick creature wearing clothes if I was being honest. I practically swam in my hoody and it made my arms look even thinner.  
  
I was taller than most men, with the face of a boy meaning that I stood out and not in a good way. At school I tended to hunch into myself upon entering rooms, trying to bring myself down to a normal height. I felt a bit more comfortable in the city, the crowds were made up more of fully grown adults, some of which were even taller than myself, although it was becoming less common as I got older.  
  
Quest, on the other hand, was several inches under five foot and dressed in a long-sleeved black top and a skirt. I couldn’t help but think that we looked ridiculous walking next to each other. I was a boy as tall as a man, and she was a woman with the height of a child.  
  
We slipped into an alleyway only a couple of blocks from Best Buy and then took turns changing into our costumes behind a dumpster. A feral cat hissed at us for disturbing its resting place, so I gave it the finger. It wandered away with its tail flicking smugly, pussy.  
  
Once we were ready, I turned and knelt, before offering my back to her. Quest hesitated for a long moment, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of physically touching somebody she had only known for a little while. She overcame her discomfort after a moment and hooked her arms around my neck.  
  
I secured her to my back with wires and then flung us upwards over the roof below dragging us through the air above over the street. We crossed a city block at a truly frightening speed, at least Quest seemed to think so, as she was currently gripping my hoody tightly and making a strangled noise of terror.  
  
I swung us around another corner at top speed and Best Buy came into view, the blue and yellow building stood out prominently. I wrapped us in an orb of wires, hiding us both from sight before bringing us in low, we swung across the street before smashing straight through the glass frontage with a shower of debris.  
  
People shouted in terror as we shattered the glass and someone immediately set off an alarm, that began blaring at full volume. I brought us to a sudden stop in the middle of the room before sending wires out to each corner of the building, others swept across every available surface searching for and destroying all the cameras. Quiet had mapped them out for me in advance, giving me the approximate locations of each.  
  
Once the cameras had been dealt with, I started using my wires to stand people up and dropped them gently outside of the front doors, while others immediately began running out on their own. Initiative, that's what I liked to see. Once they were all outside, I started covering the windows as best I could with what was available in the store, mostly shelves and boxes. I also made sure to cover the hole in the front of the store with wires.  
  
Once we were finally alone, I let the orb unravel and placed Quest gently onto a quickly growing platform. Quest stepped forward and the platform grew downwards into a staircase made of cables. With each step she took, it grew closer to the ground like a million snakes slithering over each other, I could have placed her on the floor sure, but this was much cooler.  
  
It had been less than a minute since we entered Best Buy, Quest was amongst the laptops, picking out what she wanted before stacking them gently into one of the canvas bags that were left over from the bank job. When she moved on to other things, I stopped paying attention to her and started looking over the building again, searching for anyone who might have hidden inside the store. I went to the back of the store and checked the rear entrance as well, but there was nobody outside, just a camera that I quickly destroyed.  
  
I returned to the front of the store a moment later and glanced through one of the partially covered windows. Aegis, Triumph, and Vista stood side by side on the sidewalk.  
  
Fuck.

* * *

I alerted Quest and she abandoned the massive canvas bag immediately, quickly pulling her backpack off. I watched as she ripped open the closest boxes and started stuffing the laptops into her backpack.  
  
As far as the heroes knew, I was currently alone so I would be providing an opening for Quest to escape and she would make her way back to my apartment alone. They couldn't try and capture her if they weren't even aware that she existed in the first place.  
  
I lifted the massive canvas bag filled with computers, leaving the store without anything would be very suspicious. We had considered the possibility that we might run into a hero during the raid, but their response time was truly insane. We had barely been here for two minutes total, and they were already outside in full gear. They had to have been patrolling nearby to get here so quickly, it made no sense otherwise. I let my train of thought trail off as I realised that they weren’t moving from their place outside.  
  
They were just waiting there, talking quietly to each other, a little bit too far away to make out any of their words. What were they waiting for I wondered? Backup? Was I about to have half the Protectorate down my throat?  
  
Quest drew my attention with a wave from across the store before heading for the back, I motioned for her to stop.  
  
"Wait, I think they are waiting for backup," I said quickly, "Change back, hide, wait two minutes, then leave out the back. I'll draw them off."  
  
Quest hesitated for a moment before running to the back of the store and starting to change back into her civilian clothes, stuffing the lab coat and mask into her backpack. I watched as Quest ripped her black sweater off and then started on her jeans.  
  
A good man would have turned away, but I was born for greatness.  
  
Once she was hidden from sight I turned back to the front of the store, I took a deep breath and then exhaled, psyching myself up for the imminent fight. Which was when Glory Girl came straight through the roof of the building, scaring the absolute shit out of me. She landed on the ground with a crash only a couple of feet away from me, she was grinning.  
  
"Urchin. I've come to accept your unconditional surrender." Glory Girl said confidently, placing a fist on her hip, her other hand was offered palm up in my direction.  
  
"I'll be honest, I was expecting Laserdream," I told her easily. It was a total lie, I wasn’t expecting anyone, I just thought it sounded cool.  
  
Glory Girl continued to hold her hand out towards me, what did she want me to do exactly, give her a low-five? Kiss her knuckles?  
  
"Laserdream is outside with Shielder, so are the Wards, you will not be fighting your way out of this one." Glory Girl bared her teeth in a smile. "You should come peacefully." But her face doesn't match her words at all, she totally wants to fight.  
  
Once more unto the breach, I look her straight in the eyes.  
  
"Peace was never an option," I tell her coolly, before yanking her leg out from under her and then flinging her straight through the wall next to the hole I'd made earlier.  
  
Glory Girl tumbles through the air on a direct collision course for the Wards, Aegis casually steps in front of Vista and braces his arms for impact. Glory Girl suddenly stops on a dime, still upside down, the smile on her face is terrifying.  
  
Uh oh.  
  
I slowly float forward through the hole with the bag of computers hovering behind me, projecting nothing but confidence. Glory Girl slowly tilts until she is standing in the air in front of the wards with her arms crossed. In the air to my left are Laserdream and Shielder. The entire Wards roster and the young New Waves members, the only person missing is Panacea. I point this out immediately, doing my best to waste as much time as possible, ensuring that Quest will be able to get away unnoticed.  
  
"No Panacea, huh? Is she too scared to face me?" I say confidently, looking around as if she might pop out from behind something.  
  
"Shut up!" A voice shouts from down the stairs behind them. "I'm not scared of you!"  
  
I stare at them in disbelief.  
  
"Why on earth would you bring Panacea to an ambush?" I ask bewildered.  
  
As far as I was aware, Panacea had exactly zero combat ability, unless she could touch you.  
  
"Um. This isn't an ambush." Shielder said hesitantly as he joined the conversation.  
  
I blinked up at him.  
  
"Dude, I'm pretty sure this is the definition of an ambush," I said gently, waving a hand at the heroes lined up in front of me.  
  
Shielder scratches the back of his head nervously before pointing down the street, I looked over to where he indicated, and it takes me a moment to realise what exactly I was looking at.  
  
There was a stage set up on the street with vehicles everywhere, large, white with a purple strip's diagonally down the sides, the letters ‘PRT’ were stencilled into the sides, a small cylinder on the top of each one with green and white flashing lights. A large crowd of people were gathered behind a metal waist high gate, and even more spilled out onto the street in the distance. Above the stage was a massive banner, 'Brockton Bay's Youthful Hero Fundraiser!' was written in big bold letters.  
  
Oh.  
  
"Oh!" I said surprised, "Never mind then, I'll let you get back to it. Don't mind me."  
  
I casually toss the bag of computers to Shielder, who did his best to catch it but missed. It crashed onto the ground in front of him with a crunch, he looked around with a horrified expression on his face like someone might chastise him. I turned to leave in the opposite direction but Laserdream floated down in front of me to block my way.  
  
"Nope." Laserdream said confidently. "Are you going to give up this time?" I opened my mouth to reply and she immediately blasted me backwards into the wall.  
  
"Hey! That's my trick!" I squawk indignantly, before sending wires everywhere. "Who's really the thief here?!"  
  
"You!" At least three different people say at once before I'm attacked from all sides.  
  
Glory Girl dashed right up and kicked me in the chest, and I was sent bouncing across the concrete from the force. I sent out a bunch of wires to reach the building across the street but somehow they fell short of grasping the edge, the building somehow was suddenly twice as far away as it had been and before I could stretch them out further Triumph sent me flying back towards Glory Girl with one of his powerful shouts.  
  
I was getting pummelled and even with my armour protecting me, it fucking hurt. I managed to wrap a wire around Triumph's leg as I tumbled uncontrollably away from him, and he ended up being yanked along for the ride. Serves you right asshole!  
  
Triumph reached out and caught Aegis's hand as he flew past, which pulled the wire taunt and I was yanked to a sudden stop in mid-air. Glory Girl’s foot whirled past my face, inches from my nose and my hair was swept backwards from the force of it. I lengthened the wire tethering me to Triumph and tackled Glory Girl from behind as her roundhouse kick sent her almost full circle.  
  
It felt like tackling a car, but I managed to get her in a bear hug from behind, before she could overwhelm my grip, I covered us both in thousands of wires, building another massive orb with us trapped in the centre. Glory Girl struggled but I just moved the wires along with her, so they didn't break.  
  
I lifted the entire mess straight upwards into the air in an instant. The plan that I had come up with was simple, get into the air at all costs and away from anyone who couldn't fly. This was just how I'd managed to accomplish it. Not my best effort I'll admit but, we have lift off. I pushed myself out of the orb and closed the opening trying to keep Glory Girl inside.  
  
It wouldn't last long, the gap I'd created to get free was enough for her to turn around and she started tearing her way out. I immediately thickened each of the wires into cables and started putting more of them in between us doing my best to slow her down, but fuck she was strong.  
  
I barely had a moment to take in the situation, the orb floated next to me and Triumph was dangling from it by the cable still attached to his leg, Aegis was throwing a punch at my face-. I was sent flying backwards my world absolutely rocked for a second from the solid hit.  
  
Goddammit, the sneaky little bitch got me again.  
  
I lost control of the orb as my vision blacked for a second, and it started to fall out of the sky. My vision cleared a moment later and I barely managed to catch it before Triumph went splat on the concrete below. I could see that Glory Girl had dug most of her torso free of the wire and was now trying to rip her legs out of the clingy mess. I started wrapping wires around her face to try and slow her down, and she went ballistic.  
  
Laserdream arrived a moment later and immediately started towards Glory Girl. Shielder was on his way upwards, much slowly in the air then his sister. Vista and Panacea had both been left far behind on the ground, unable to fly. Shielder looked to be angling to get underneath Triumph and once he got a hold of Triumph, they would both be a nonfactor. This would leave me only fighting Aegis, Laserdream and Glory Girl. I could do this; I just needed to get out of their line of sight, and I had an idea.  
  
I stopped trying to contain Glory Girl and immediately shot away in the opposite direction from them all. Aegis was hot on my tail, doing his best to follow me but he was slower than me by large margin. Laserdream passed him by in seconds and rapidly started to close in on me, Glory Girl finally freed herself and joined the chase. Glory Girl apparently couldn't fly as fast as Laserdream, but I slotted her in as around twice as fast as Aegis.  
  
I started building more giant orbs as I fled, first two, then four, finally six huge orbs of wires were orbiting closely around me. I moved them into a line between me and the heroes before sliding inside the third one. I tensed my telekinetic muscles and tossed them in different directions, while leaving one to fall straight downwards.  
  
Laserdream went for the furthest one first, taking off and shooting a blast at another. I managed to pull it out of the way of her blast before it hit and she immediately switched targets to the one that had dodged, jebaited. Aegis went after the two I lobbed towards the ocean, no way in hell would I be going in those ones. Glory girl went straight down for the one I'd dropped on the ground. Jokes on them all I was in the one that I had lobbed back towards Vista. Why would I be in that one you ask?  
  
Because who in their right mind would try and escape towards the enemy, me motherfucker that's who.  
  
Vista was still standing with Panacea, near the front of the building, and her eyes snapped up when the orb came into sight. Vista quickly raised her hand and tried to distort the balls shape, and it worked up until her power reached me before abruptly failing, unable to effect living matter. I immediately wrapped them both up in orbs of their own, leaving plenty of room to breathe, before I sped away at street level weaving between alleyways as fast as I could manage.  
  
Aegis immediately stopped chasing his two orbs and started heading back to Vista and Panacea. Vista no doubt told him what had happened over their radio. New Wave evidently wasn't wearing any because they chased and blew up the other orbs before flying back and meeting up with the others.  
  
I could feel Vista doing weird things to my wires and I let the both. It was far too late to for any of them to catch me, I was already on a bus headed out of downtown.  
  
Full Frontals 2, Ward's New Wave Coalition 0.

* * *

When I opened the door and stepped inside, I was greeted by the worried faces of Quest and Gaston, Size Queen just yawned.  
  
Bitch.  
  
"Oh thank god," Quest said relieved, fisting her hand in her shirt.  
  
I felt a pang of something flash through my chest and quickly pushed it away. They were watching the news on the TV, 'Breaking News!' scrolled along the bottom in red. It was covering the superpowered battle that just took place at the fundraiser. It was looping through the same three scenes repeatedly. The first scene was of Laserdream blasting me into the wall at the start of the fight, the second was Glory Girl booting me into Triumph and getting blasted by his shout. The third scene was Glory Girl’s missed roundhouse kick whizzing past my nose, while Aegis had his hand clasped with Triumphs.  
  
Glory Girl is lucky she wore tights under that skirt.  
  
"How did you get away from them?" Quest asked quietly, "The video only shows up until the moment you leave Best Buy."  
  
"I used my massively superior brain to defeat them all of course." I bragged, joining them at the table.  
  
Gaston had made lunch; he truly was the best boss.  
  
"How did you actually get away though?" Gaston asked with interest and I looked at him curiously, I had better give him something, he was the boss after all.  
  
"I made a bunch of giant balls and tossed them everywhere," I said easily, "I was hiding in one of them, easiest thing in the world."  
  
I kept my voice casual, as if I hadn't been desperately fighting to escape.  
  
"Oh!" Quest said impressed while even Size Queen let out an appreciative hum.  
  
"And if there's one thing I've got," I continued, sensing an opportunity. "It's giant balls."  
  
Gaston just sighed.


	7. Chapter 7

Monday. 21st April. 24 Hours.  
  
The rest of yesterday was spent helping Quest set up her new computers, before she got back to work, we were spending today preparing for the attack itself.  
  
My kitchen had quickly become Quest's new command centre, the stolen laptops were all over the place on countertops and even the kitchen table. They were apparently all running individual programs meant to defeat String Theory's own defences and to keep the subverted defences firmly under Quest’s control. The only issue we had left was the security team itself, as they would still be able to manually override the doors and they would most likely do so as soon as we starting kicking in their doors.  
  
Since they could just shut the doors manually, we weren't even going to bother trying to get them under control, I would be smashing straight through them instead. Out of curiosity, I asked Quest what would happen if the power went out, she had quickly answered that the internet would turn off and that the computers wouldn't be able to stay connected to the base. Obviously, this would be catastrophic, resulting in all the security immediately reverting to its original programming, ergo, not a good thing.  
  
Thank god I had played my electricity bill already, but between the two-hour showers that Quest took and all these computers, my next bill was probably going to suck. Gaston had revealed at the last minute that he would be coming with us to the base, so he could try and talk String theory down.  
  
While his heart seemed to be in the right place, this was a terrible idea for many reasons. Size Queen and I had both tried to argue against this, but he had pulled rank on us, he was now an additional factor we would have to protect and be aware of during a really important time. I wasn't willing to drag him along with me, in the off chance I was put in a position where I had to choose between saving him and stopping the device.  
  
I knew which one I would pick, maybe I would miss the moon, maybe I wouldn't.  
  
Gaston wouldn't back down, not even when I reassured him that I would be bringing String Theory to him anyway, he really was a stubborn bastard sometimes, eventually, we gave in and changed the plan. Size Queen would be staying with him, playing keep away and defending him from the normies in the base.  
  
If at any point they were attacked Gaston would be sent on ahead and Size Queen would deal with the threat, Quest even gave Gaston her taser in case he needed to fight someone off. Gaston took it with a fair amount of reluctance, apparently quite adverse to the idea of carrying a weapon, even if it was non-lethal.  
  
By the time we had left my apartment building, Quest had the vast majority of String Theories base under control, not including the doors. Everything was coming together, and it felt amazing to have been a part of setting up something like this. We packed everything we might need into bags and then went and found the bus we had decided on.  
  
We would have less than five minutes to get through the facility's defences and at its centre we would find the G-Driver, surrounded by a large metal shell, apparently shaped like a gigantic pillbox. Gaston had explained that the outer shell was at least as thick as the vault door from the bank, that it was designed with no visible gaps in the container, and from what he had been told, the shell was completely unbreakable.  
  
The G-driver couldn't be accessed before the shell opened, which left us with little recourse other than taking over the entire facility and then waiting for it to open. Which none of us wanted to do, because trying to contain everyone in the facility for an indefinite amount of time was a terrible idea and if the heroes were somehow alerted, we would be absolutely screwed. Therefore, the best option we had available to us was to attack after the container was already open, but the device not yet fired. The container would begin to open when exactly five minutes remained on the countdown.  
  
The plan was simple, Blitzkrieg.  
  
We would enter the facility when the container begins to open, the security team would no doubt start locking doors down almost immediately, and we would have to deal with any threats that wasn't part of the electronic systems personally.  
  
My job was to cut a path straight to the G-Driver, not stopping until it was in pieces.

* * *

Monday. 21st April. 11:50 PM. 10 Minutes.  
  
The three of us approached the front gates of the facility, right out in the open, without bothering to hide. When I had been here previously it had been late at night, with not a lot of visibility overall. In the light of day however, I could really see just how impressive the place was, from down here it looked massive.  
  
We all set our watches in a countdown synced to ten minutes on the bus under Gaston’s guidance, and the time was slowly ticking closer and closer to the five-minute mark. This was it, the moment of truth, the culmination of all our hard work. We stood in a tense silence watching the time tick away, every tick of the little hand was accompanied by the tension ratcheting up a notch.  
  
"Alright," Gaston said suddenly, smiling. "Any second thoughts? Cold feet?"  
  
I blinked at the question and the tension faded away.  
  
"We’ve got this, Gaston." I smiled back at him; Size Queen just punched a giant fist into an equally large palm.  
  
"You'll be great, Andy." Gaston said quietly, before settling down into a sprinters position. "Don't stop for anything."  
  
When the timer hit five minutes, I ripped the gate out of the ground and blasted forward at maximum speed. I smashed the front door into the building and heard the massive gate land in the distance. Almost immediately I was being shot at and the bullets bounced off my armour, and I smashed the next door aside before sprinting straight past them. They tried to follow me with their guns but lost line of sight almost immediately as I tore through the hallways, they starting running to catch up, but I was already at the next door.  
  
This place was truly massive I realised, crossing the entire building would have taken a couple of minutes on its own, but with these doors were huge metal things, and the entire complex was like a square beehive, only Instead of hundreds of honeycombs, it was hundreds of square rooms with metal walls and concrete floors.  
  
Each door took a moment to thread wires between the tiny gaps and wrench it open, then I had to cross the distance to the next one and start all over again. I was getting more and more efficient at it as I went, refining my technique. I started spreading my wires straight out to the next door before I was even halfway through the closest one.  
  
I was about halfway through the facility when someone shot something at me that I barely had the presence of mind to slap out of the air. Whatever it was immediately exploded next to me and I was smashed through the wall on my left. My vision went black for a moment before I came to a stop amongst the bits and pieces of the wall.  
  
Fuck.  
  
I struggled to my feet absolutely reeling from the explosion, if I hadn't had my armour up, and if I hadn't hit that thing away, I'm quite sure I would be dead, just like that, no do-overs. As it was, I was unsteady on my feet and the side of my head hurt from where I hit it when I briefly lost control of my wires, it made me furious, fucking normies. The guy had abandoned the big-ass gun he was carrying and started coming towards me with his hands up.  
  
Fisticuffs?!?  
  
I smashed him into the wall with a wave of my hand before stumbling towards the next door. I had lost my momentum entirely; I glanced at my watch and felt my stomach try to climb out of my throat.  
  
00:00:47.  
  
My stumbling walk immediately turned into a stumbling sprint, as I did my best to get my shit together. I speared thousands of wires straight ahead of me, ripping the next three doors out of my way before pulling myself into the air and blasting off down the hallway. Three more doors fell to my wrath before I had to slow down again, the final door lay before me.  
  
The last door was massive, and it took at least five times as many wires as any of the others had to even move it. I thickened each wire into a cable and forced both doors back into the wall with a grinding of metal on metal.  
  
I stumbled over the threshold and tried to take everything in at once, the ceiling had partially retracted and there was a woman on the other side of a glass panel watching the room. An enormous device rested on two robotic arms that were bolted to the floor. It was angled upwards towards the night sky, through the hole in the roof. The machine was humming, and it kept getting louder by the second.  
  
It vaguely resembled a cannon, the bottom half was larger around than a person’s torso and the entire thing narrowed to a point, only a couple of inches wide. A luminescent blue line wound its way around the thing from the bottom to the point in an elegant spiral. A large monitor was mounted in the centre of the wall furthest from the door. Large red numbers ticked slowly downwards.  
  
00:00:19.  
  
I lashed out with my power and the room was filled with countless wires, they tore across the room and went straight into the hole at the top of the device. They filled it completely, before branching out into thousands more inside the machine, they groped and grasped, searching for cracks, gaps, or anything else I could find. I tore everything inwards, the shielding, electronic parts, and cables were ripped from the device.  
  
It kept humming.  
  
I pushed harder and tore one of the mounts from the ground tilting the device off target. I thickened the cables in the thin end and ripped the top three feet of the tube into a hundred pieces. The device was still humming, It wasn't enough.  
  
I ripped the entire thing free of the ground, shouting incoherently and smashed it into the ground as hard as I could, shrapnel was launched across the room from the force, the lights on the ceiling started flickering, the humming finally stopped. I breathed heavily as I stared at the monitor on the wall, a bright red seven blinked back at me and it didn't change.  
  
String Theory for her part, was staring out at the room in shock, one of the mounting arms I had broken off the device was sticking out of the shattered glass in front of her. She pressed a button on her side of the door, and it opened suddenly. In her hand she held a detonator, String Theory held it tightly against her chest as if I might take it away, she walked forward until she stood next to the broken remains of the G-Driver. She didn't even spare me a glance, as if she hadn't noticed me.  
  
Gaston stumbled into the room a moment later panting for breath, and String Theory turned to look at him.  
  
"Gaston?" String Theory said, her voice was soft and confused. “Why did you?" She trailed off as her other hand made its way to the front of her shirt.  
  
I didn't know what I was expecting to see when I saw String Theory for the first time, but this wasn't it. I expected viciousness, cruelty, and an impossible intellect, but only one of those things was present, instead, she seemed almost ethereal. She started to laugh, and it wasn't the malicious laughter you would expect from a supervillain or the maniacal laughter from those afflicted by insanity.  
  
It was a messy thing, breathy and undignified, a shudder ran the length of her body. She covered her mouth to try and stifle it but failed at even that. She doubled over, clinging desperately to her shirt, choking, squeaking, and wheezing. Her laughter slowly fell away over the course of half a minute and she fought to straighten back up. She sniffed once loudly.  
  
Oh.  
  
String Theory wasn't laughing after all, she was crying, I could see her face now, it was wet, and she rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, smudging her eyeliner.  
  
"There are bombs," String Theory managed, still crying. "In the city."  
  
Gaston took a small step towards her.  
  
"We've already destroyed them," Gaston said gently, as if she were fragile and might break into a million pieces. "That was the first thing we did."  
  
String theory looked heartbroken and another sob racked her body, I tried not to look straight at her, somehow feeling a surge of guilt rushing through me.  
  
I couldn't blame her, on the eve of her greatest accomplishment, everything she had worked up to her entire life, to this moment and we had just come in and swept it all away from her in an instant. Her moment of brilliance, reduced to nothing more than a, could have been, the G-Driver was gone.  
  
"That's a lie, isn't it?" String Theory whispered brokenly, but he couldn’t reply. "Gaston?" She asked miserably.  
  
String Theory raised the detonator and neither of us moved to stop her, she clicked it four times, nothing happened for a long moment and then a distance noise echoed through the open roof of the room. I felt a pit open in my stomach at the noise, turning to Gaston uncomprehending.  
  
How had she-  
  
"How many?" Gaston asked horrified.  
  
String Theory looked at him quietly before opening her hand, there were flashing red numbers along the side of the detonator.  
  
There wasn’t three bombs, there was four.  
  
The alarms suddenly turned back on, sending noise blasting throughout the room, all the doors we had forced our way past were slamming shut one after another, until the massive door slammed shut with a thump.  
  
Gaston had an anguished look on his face and String Theory was watching him quietly. A metal sheet suddenly retracted on the wall directly behind her, two barrels connected by a piece of metal poked through the hole, it spun quickly and let out a barrage of flashing projectiles that cut through Gaston in an instant. The gun retracted back into the roof a moment later and the metal was unmarred once more.  
  
I watched Gaston fall backward onto the ground, without comprehension, someone had started screaming. Two creatures erupted upwards, and the world was washed away before them, they rose upwards for an eternity, stretching into infinity. I could see them, I could see them, but I couldn't understand them. There was no pattern in my head that I could find and draw similarities, they were immense incomprehensible entities from somewhere else.  
  
I could see them, and they were vast.  
  
When I woke up, everything was destroyed, the ceiling lights had gone out entirely and a forest of metal bars crisscrossed the room, thick metal posts had torn holes through solid steel doors and concrete floors. The roof had collapsed and through it, a measure of light illuminated the room.  
  
There was a section of the room that had remained mysteriously unscathed and in the middle of all the chaos lay two bodies, but only one was breathing.  
  
The full Moon hung suspended in the sky, large, radiant, and intact.  
  
Gaston was dead.

* * *

22nd April, 12:07 AM.  
  
Size Queen found us soon after, and the colossal woman fought her way through the massive doors, at what must have been her maximum size, and when she started towards the metal obstructions. I moved them out of the way with my power, and she passed by unhindered.  
  
Size Queen shrunk down to her normal size as she crossed the room and took a moment to pull me to my feet, neither of us said anything for a moment before we moved towards the centre of the room.  
  
I reached down and belatedly took the detonator from String Theory's hand, as if it might somehow reverse what had just happened and she let me take it without a fight, she simply sat on the ground at stared at the body, I tried not to look.  
  
"What do we do?" I whispered, crying.  
  
Size Queen put her hand on my shoulder before she squeezed it once and then let go.  
  
"It’s time to go," Size Queen said quietly, pulling me away. "We can't stay here; the alarms will bring the police and then the heroes will respond, if they aren't already on their way."  
  
I tugged my arm out of her grip, I couldn't leave them here, not after everything we went through, I mumbled as much to her, unable to meet her eyes.  
  
"Urchin, the job is done! Gaston's dead," Size Queen said harshly, but her eyes were wet. "Staying here won't accomplish anything, I'm leaving, and you should too."  
  
Size Queen turned and strode to the door, she turned back once she got there and waited for me to follow.  
  
“Andy.” Size Queen said quietly.  
  
I stayed where I was, and after a moment she left.  
  
Everything was falling apart; Gaston was dead, and our team was fracturing, I didn't know what to do, my earpiece was broken, and I couldn't contact Quest.  
  
I couldn't stop crying.  
  
I finally summoned the strength to do something, I gently wrapped wires around the body and lifted it off the ground before doing my best to restrain String Theory's hands with wire. I helped her to her feet, and she followed me quietly, still without any acknowledgment. I moved as much of the debris out of our way as possible and started towards the entrance.  
  
Size Queen's path was obvious, she left the same way we had come in. I had cleared a path from the entrance all the way in, and the doors had been resealed behind me, she had reopened them all, to get to us. I didn't hate her for leaving us behind, I had seen her face when she had looked down at the body.  
  
I followed her path all the way back to the entrance, I looked for her, but she was nowhere to be found, I wondered if I would ever see her again. I made a platform of wires and stepped upon it when it was large enough to hold us. String Theory stepped up onto the platform without issue, her expression still vacant, the platform lifted into the air and I started towards the city, rising above the buildings.  
  
I was headed straight for the ocean.  
  
The cities lights that had looked so beautiful only days earlier were now just lights, the beauty had been stripped away. When I arrived at the waterfront I barely remember having crossed the distance at all. The ocean lay beneath me as we flew, a flat dark plane of water, disturbed only by the reflection of the moon. I was numb, I couldn't feel anything, and when I thought back to this moment later, I would feel horror at having been so close to it.  
  
The Protectorate headquarters grew large as I approached, growing to an absurd height to tower above me. I brought us around before landing on an area that was not covered by the perfectly smooth forcefield that surrounded most of the structure.  
  
I stood waiting outside the forcefield until finally three people approached, Miss Militia, Dauntless, and Velocity.  
  
"Urchin." Miss Militia said quietly, glancing at the others.  
  
It wasn't a greeting. Velocity nodded in understanding, Dauntless simply glanced at her without recognition of the name.  
  
"Who are they?" Miss Militia asked calmly.  
  
Indicating first, the coffin of wires and then String Theory.  
  
Miss Militia motioned smoothly, unhurried, a pistol was in her hand, a moment later it was a knife, she kept her weapon of the moment pointed at the ground away from me. I started crying again, unable to help myself and Velocity shifted awkwardly, made an aborted motion before becoming still, Dauntless remained silent but looked distinctly uncomfortable.  
  
Miss Militia didn't take her eyes off me for a second.  
  
I lifted the body before placing it gently next to the forcefield, all three of them took an immediate step backward at the motion and I retracted the wires slowly until the body was revealed. I pushed String Theory gently towards the bubble and she stumbled a few steps before falling to her knees next to Gaston.  
  
String Theory didn't make a sound of complaint.  
  
"This is String Theory. She is a Tinker. There are bombs under the city," I struggled to form a full sentence. "Four, or there was."  
  
"The explosion that happened ten minutes ago was her doing?" Miss Militia asked calmly.  
  
I nodded silently, and nobody said anything more, so I continued after a moment.  
  
"There's two downtown; one's west of the bank, and the other is south of the PRT building." My voice was quiet as I listed it all off.  
  
Velocity had raised his finger to his ear and started to talk quietly, too far away for me to hear what he was saying. Miss Militia suddenly stepped forward out of the forcefield, and Dauntless followed her silently, quickly flanking me from the other side.  
  
"There's one in the commercial district, near that new shopping centre," I kept going, "In the maintenance tunnels beneath the city, I don't know if there's more."  
  
My face was wet, and I wanted to rub my eyes, but my mask was in the way. Miss Militia approached String Theory and restrained her properly, when she lifted her knife to cut the wires I let them fall away.  
  
"Those three shouldn't explode on their own," I added, "We cut the connection to the detonator, but she made another bomb after we shut it down and we missed it. "  
  
Dauntless was standing right next to me now, and If I made a hostile move he would stop me.  
  
"The man?" Dauntless asked quietly.  
  
Velocity had finished with his call and stepped through the bubble on the other side of me.  
  
"His name was Gaston, he was a good guy," I sobbed once, looking down at his unmoving body for the first time. "We tried to stop her, but he died."  
  
I left suddenly, blasting upwards as fast as I could, Velocity still almost caught me, only the suddenness of my departure had let me escape, I could feel his hand brush the sleeve of my left arm, I slipped through his grasp and vanished into the sky.  
  
They didn't give chase.


	8. Aftermath

22nd April. 01:45 AM.  
  
It was my birthday, I realized sometime later, I had gotten so caught up in our rush to save the city, that It had completely failed to register. I sat on the roof of an apartment block in the commercial district, my knees pulled tight against my chest. I watched as the emergency services picked their way through the debris, aided by a large number of the PRT and even some heroes.  
  
They hauled a young woman from a partially destroyed building, she was covered in burns and bleeding badly, somehow that made her luckier than most of the others, in a strange way. The young woman was screaming and thrashing as they put her on a stretcher, the building they had saved her from was on the outer most edge of the crater that covered what must have been several kilometres, if it had been just a couple of meters larger she wouldn't even be alive.  
  
I had initially been under the impression that these bombs had been mundane ones, but that couldn’t be possible with the destruction that I currently was looking at. Everything inside of the crater, buildings, parks, cars, people, it was all gone, a sprinkling of debris lined the bottom of it, like sediment in a bowl fallen, almost a perfect circle of the city was just gone. The force of the blast had carried slightly further than that, for maybe another fifty meters outside of the crater’s perfectly defined edge, with what looked like normal explosive force, leaving crushed buildings and fires.  
  
After everything we had done, all our plotting, our plans, our arguments, our fights, and our laughter, to have it all unravel like this at the end felt akin to having my heart ripped from my chest. It felt like I was reliving the day I got my powers, and the overwhelming feeling of loss that had accompanied it.  
  
This must have been how String Theory had felt, right after we had ripped everything away from her in an instant. We had taken everything she had worked for away, when she hadn't thought that it was possible, so then she turned around and did the same thing to us in return. I wonder if she thought it was a fair trade, I looked towards the section of the crater where my apartment building used to be.  
  
I didn't think it was very fair at all.

* * *

23rd April, 11:07 PM.  
  
My power had changed after that night, It had grown in a strange way and all it had cost was the small price of my friends life.  
  
My power had always been able to extend phenomenal distances, far further than I could see. I had once sent it out in a straight line into the air, and it just kept going, I hadn't even reached a point where I'd hit a limit in that way. I had also never reached a limit on how many wires I could control at once, other than after a certain point there was a lot less room to move, besides, I hadn’t found any more utility by just making millions of them.  
  
However there had been a limit on how thick I could make the wires, the maximum width I had been able to reach was only slightly thicker than a broom handle. When I had woken up to the destroyed room, back when Gaston lay in the centre of all that chaos, there had been a forest of metal threading through the walls. Some of that metal had been thicker around than I was, so here I was, sitting in a park in the middle of the night testing it.  
  
The conclusion I ended up reaching was an obvious one, the thickness limit I had before was now gone. An immense pillar stood in the centre of the park, far larger than even a house, sitting completely still on the turf. It was perfectly under my control, and with my strange form of wire-control it weighed nothing to me, all the weight was still there. I knew that if I dropped my pillar onto something, it would be crushed beneath the weight of it.  
  
I made the pillar shrink down before dissolving it into countless tiny wires before it finally vanished, a large circular indentation remained on the turf, the ground compressed from the sheer weight of my construct. Before, when I had tried to make something larger than my limit I would hit a wall that felt like I was trying to physically push through it, and the more I pushed the more painful the resistance. I had managed to make a very thick cable once, in a time of stress, but this was something else entirely.  
  
There was no wall to push through anymore, or If there had been I hadn't even come close to approaching it. Before if I went all out, the most destruction I could hope to create would have been on the level of collapsing a building, and it would require an absurd amount of wires targeted at the weak points to topple it.  
  
But now, what would happen if I just created a hundred pillars the size of a building and directed them at something? I was now dangerous in a way I would never have been previously; It was at once amazing, and terrifying.  
  
I would have traded it in an instant if it would bring them both back.

* * *

20th May 2009.  
  
Belle Dewitt's funeral was a quiet affair, It had taken place in Cambridge, her hometown. I was missing even more school to attend it and I would probably be in trouble for it later, but nothing could have stopped me from attending.  
  
There were only two people in attendance, besides me, a short old man with white hair and a younger but equally short girl were in attendance. Belle’s father and younger sister respectively, the sister had a lot of the same facial features, it made it difficult to look at her. She was crying and the old man was very tense, crushing the cane in his white knuckled grip, clearly forcing himself to hold it together.  
  
I had only known Quest for a couple of days, but It felt like a part of me had been ripped out. I stood back as they buried her, crying quietly to myself, the old man had silently watched me, wondering how I was connected to his daughter, I left before he could ask.  
  
I was a coward and all I could do was run away.  
  
I was under some serious scrutiny after I had missed more than a week of school without informing the school, and then even more as I left the city for the funeral. Arcadia didn't take kindly to unexplained absences of students, but they had backed off as soon as it was revealed that my house was at ground-zero. The school had then turned around and did everything they could to help, even finding temporary accommodation of me while my insurance situation was sorted out.  
  
The news coverage of the bombing was everywhere I looked, I couldn’t seem to escape it, and once String Theory's involvement was made known, it abruptly doubled in size. Parahuman’s being responsible for bombing a city brought attention to it on an international level. It was all anybody could talk about for months, thousands dead and injured. If String Theory hadn't already been in custody, a kill order would have been passed for her without delay. They talked it all to death and once the G-Driver's purpose was discovered the situation started all over again.  
  
When the trial was finally held it was a daunting affair, there were thousands of people surrounding the court, most of which were protesters, they held signs targeting String Theory with personal insults and even more with anti-parahumans messaging in general. The protestors were being held back from the courthouse with a waist-high metal fence and a combination of the Brockton Bay Police Department and the Parahuman Response Team.  
  
Members of the Protectorate were standing guard around the courthouse itself, Miss Militia and Armsmaster were on either side of the large doors. Assault and Battery were halfway down the stone staircase watching the crowds, their expressions professional but rather grim.  
  
Certain members of the press were admitted to the building and the judgment itself was being streamed live to millions across the world. I couldn't bring myself to watch it, it felt like driving a spike into my chest, I couldn't help but fall back into a loop of guilt and pain. Gaston had wagered everything he had and even his own life to stop the woman he loved from being sent to the birdcage, to stop this from happening. I was supposed to help him, I promised that I would help him, but I failed.  
  
String Theory would spend the rest of her life inside the Baumann Parahuman Containment Centre.

* * *

I saw the video months later; she was seated at a bench in the courtroom with a microphone sitting untouched in front of her, her hair was a frazzled mess, that had been pulled into a singular large plat down the length of her back, she wore the same white lab coat and black underclothes that I had last seen her in, freshly washed. Her mouth was stretched wide across her face in an excited grin, her eyes were no longer dead, they were large, wild, and sparkled in the bright lights of the courtroom.  
  
String Theory laughed and laughed and laughed.


	9. Chapter 9

17th April 2010.  
  
Class ended in five minutes and all I could think was that it could not come fast enough. I had an overwhelming urge to head outside, It was almost unbearable being stuck inside such a small room all day, especially after I have had a taste of that glorious freedom that was just outside the door.  
  
I'd spent most of my free nights darting around Brockton Bay, far too fast for any normal person to keep up with, faster than a lot of capes for that matter, swinging around buildings and dashing through the air. To most of the citizens of Brockton Bay being outside after dark was a choice that only the brave or stupid would make, and so they tended to their business during the safety of the day.  
  
But to me, the sun going down just felt like freedom, I could go wherever I wanted and explore the verticality of the city as much as I desired, searching out every nook or cranny along the way. Occasionally I would get chased by somebody, most often it was the members of New Wave that I have had several encounters with already. Laserdream often took a moment out of her night to try to chase me down, and on occasion, Shielder was also present. I hadn’t seen Glory Girl at all since our last encounter, nor Panacea for that matter.  
  
Purity made what was almost a nightly appearance in the sky above Brockton Bay, the brightest thing by far as she cut across the city like a shooting star far too low in the sky. I did my best to stay out of her area, although she had spotted me several times. I made sure to get the hell out of there before she got any ideas in her head about trying to kick my ass. I say trying because I was a total badass and there was absolutely no way that I was going to get my ass beat by anybody, not today, no sir, it wasn't going to happen.  
  
Occasionally I would see one or more of the Wards, and they even had a few new members now. There was one guy called Clockblocker, and what an amazing name that was, he had joined the heroes back in May of last year. Clockblocker wore a white and grey bodysuit that covered him from head to toe with a white oval mask not too dissimilar to my own covering his face. His costume had clocks painted all over it, which was both stupid and awesome at the same time, I could just imagine all the hilarious quips and one-liners you could drop with a getup like that, I was almost jealous.  
  
Clockblocker power was interesting, he could freeze things in place just by touching them, and I am not sure of the exact mechanics it either. Was it breakable in some way? Did the object move along with the rotation of the earth, or was it dead still while the earth passed below it, was that something he had to consider?  
  
I was hesitant to go near the cape for several reason, I had no idea how our powers would interact, could he touch one of my wires and freeze me by extension? He was by far the most potentially dangerous Ward, and I was sure this would be an issue if I ever had to tangle with them again. That isn’t even mentioning the other big problem if he accidentally froze one of my thin wires that I filled the air with to track movement around me and then somebody walked into one of them? Yikes, frozen wires hanging in the air could really hurt someone. I would have to sit back and toss shit at him if it ever came down to it.  
  
Another cape had also joined the Wards in January of this year, and his name was kind of terrible. Kid Win was a Tinker that rode around on a hoverboard and fought with a pair of laser pistols. The hero wore a suit of red armor, made of smooth metal panels, and he had a visor that covered the top half of his face. That hoverboard was fucking awesome, and I was totally going to try stealing it the first chance that I got. I don't care how old you are, or what you like to do in your free time, a hoverboard was dope, hell I could already fly, and I still found it to be the coolest thing I'd ever heard of.  
  
I even saw Armsmaster from the Protectorate once, driving around the city on his motorcycle, he was going way over the speed limit at the time and I briefly considered trying to perform a civilian arrest on him for being a very naughty boy. A Cape arrest? A Mercenary arrest? Whatever it would have been hilarious, but he didn't see me, and I eventually decided not to go and introduce myself. I enjoyed not being in jail after all, and I was quite sure he would have tried to kick my ass on principle, his armor was cool, I'm not going to lie.

* * *

I'd moved further into the city as well, after my apartment had been erased from existence I had been in limbo. Due to my age, my status as an emancipated minor, and the details of how my apartment had suddenly vanished, I was in a temporary housing situation for months before my insurance situation had finally been sorted out. When it had finally been figured out, I went out and found a new place, It was another apartment building, this time an apartment on the sixth floor, It was even smaller than my previous one by a noticeable amount. It turns out that the price of a place increased the closer to the city center you were, who knew?  
  
This new place of mine was basically a compact single room space-saver, the kitchen and lounge room were separated from the bedroom by a thin white wall to floor divider. There was a single door that led to a small bathroom with a toilet and shower wedged inside. It was a nice enough place if you didn't mind single room living, which I didn't at least not yet anyway. It was technically in the Docks South, but, It was right on the border of the Downtown area. Only minutes away from Arcadia, which was amazingly convenient and as far as I was concerned totally justified the increase in price.  
  
I was much closer to the ocean than I had been before, but still not actually close enough for it to become an issue. I could see it from my window, everything had a downside it would seem, but with my brand-new blackout curtain, I should be able to deal it with. I stared out of the window for a moment and shivered, before drawing the curtain shut, suddenly wishing I had gotten the other side of the building.  
  
I was a proper mercenary now and I have been taking serious jobs since sometime in September last year. I have had some people come to me with the strangest requests imaginable, people have hired me for birthdays, smash and grab jobs, debt retrieval work, investigations, and someone had even tried to hire me for some wet work. I said no to that one for obvious reasons, I've got a code that I follow now.  
  
Always complete the job, always get paid, and don’t kill anyone. I hadn't messed up any of them yet and I didn't plan too. It was initially quite hard to get any work; I didn't have an existing client base to pull from and I had needed to figure out how I was supposed to get one in the first place. I had no idea what I was doing obviously, especially since I had exactly zero prior experience before I had stumbled upon Gaston in that alleyway. I flinched away from the thought before doing my best to push it away.  
  
I had no idea about how to market myself, as I couldn't exactly put my phone number out anywhere or just walk up to people on the street while in costume and ask them for a job, well I did try that last thing once. It was how I got that birthday gig, but I swore to never again attend one of those, kids were terrible, vicious creatures that would beat the crap out of you while their sociopathic parents watched on, laughing at how adorable they were, bastards the lot of them.  
  
I had ended up contacting someone who I knew had previous experience with this type of thing, someone who already had their own network and could set me up with jobs given the right incentive.  
  
I went to Coil.  
  
Only I hadn't known how I was supposed to get in contact with him either, so I had to figure that out as well. I improvised, making my way to where I had met the man, I remember standing on the roof of the last place I'd seen him and yelling his name at the top of my lungs. This obviously didn't work like I had hoped and people from the nearby apartment buildings had made it clear that they didn't appreciate all the noise at two in the morning.  
  
I was truly stumped, and the terrible sting of defeat was felt strongly that night. Coil had ended up contacting me soon afterward, I'm guessing that he had some type of surveillance on those buildings and someone had shown him the video. I could not believe that it had worked, I was such a genius.  
  
Coil made sure that I was aware of his displeasure about what I had done, threatening retaliation if I ever pulled something like that again. He told me that I should be much more covert in any of our future dealings, but we managed to established something approaching a working relationship after that little hiccup, and he gave me a number that I could use to contact him in the future for more work.  
  
Problem solved, first try, easy clap.  
  
Coil sent me any jobs he felt that I would be interested in, and those that he must have felt I was capable of, because they had been slowly increasing in difficulty since the first one. In return, I was paying him a percentage of my earnings off each job, a static finder’s fee whenever I completed one. It was a symbiotic relationship of sorts, in that we both benefitted from it in some way, and I was able to work out some of the slowly mounting frustration that was growing inside of me.  
  
I still hadn’t made any new connections with anyone, and my life was still a lonely broken mess. I still felt like an outsider at school and I still dreamt terrible things almost every night. The only thing that helps distract me from my problems was going out in costume. Fortunately for me, I had just gotten off the phone with Coil, and now I have a potential job, it was time to go to work.

* * *

I met my potential employer at the Spectrum hotel, a massive sprawling structure that stretched high into the air. I’d be told that he had rented the entire top floor of the building, the guy was apparently stupidly rich and someone who could do that kind of shit on a whim.  
  
I entered the Spectrum Hotel from the roof of the building by unlocking the roof access. It took barely a moment’s thought to slip wires into the lock and then under the door to break the chain that held the inside closed. I wandered down the stairs and almost immediately I could hear a piano playing from across the floor. I followed the music careful not to make any noise, it was a piano piece that I had no fucking idea about, but It sounded rather good to my inexperienced ears, so that must have meant something at least.  
  
As I stepped around the corner I spotted a woman in a red dress, sitting in front of a massive piano, she was young, beautiful, and obviously incredibly talented. A much older man with stylish grey hair was sitting in a black leather chair with a simple glass table by his side. The man had one of his legs crossed over his knee and he had his chin resting laconically on the palm of his hand. An almost empty wine glass was held in his other hand, as he gazed coolly at the woman in red.  
  
I was surprised to find that the man was wearing an entirely white suit, expensive-looking cufflinks, a neat white tie with an 'S' stitched in a golden thread that caught the light. I glanced down and realized that even his shoes were white. Everything he was wearing was perfectly pristine, unruffled, and looked like it probably cost more money than what I had stolen from the bank over a year ago. The man finally noticed me, and his eyes widened slightly, but he remained otherwise calm.  
  
Cool as a cucumber huh?  
  
I looked at the woman again, there was no way that this woman was his wife, If she were a day over twenty-one I would eat my mask and she certainly wasn't his daughter, not with the way she was looking at him from under her lashes.  
  
Damn Daniel.  
  
"Urchin." Daniel Stansfield said to me levelly. "I expected the reception to inform me of your arrival."  
  
Did he seriously think I was going to just walk in the front door? When there were heroes that would hunt me down as soon as I appeared in public? Rich people were weird as fuck, I swear to god. The woman at the piano glanced at me, surprised at my sudden appearance, her attention had been on Daniel and the piano, so she hadn’t seen me walk in. The woman turned to Daniel nervously, but he ignored her.  
  
"I used the roof," I said simply, before angling my body to face him. "I hear you have a job for me?"  
  
Daniel nodded once, and I tilted my head in the woman’s direction.  
  
"It's fine," Daniel said evenly, before waving a hand lazily in her direction. "Shall I tell you what I require?"  
  
It was my turn to nod, the woman had paused in the middle of her song as she watched us, but she slowly started playing again when nothing untoward happened, but her eyes stayed locked on me the entire time.  
  
"I am quite well off," Daniel said evenly.  
  
No shit, Daniel was rich and a master of the obvious, some people have all the luck.  
  
"My wealth comes from railroads, shipping, and some other side ventures," Daniel explained calmly, before tilting his wine glass towards me.  
  
"Shipping must have taken a hit lately," I said easily, mostly to gauge his reaction.  
  
Leviathan had pretty much fucked the entire world's shipping industry because unless you were willing to risk a gigantic creature popping up and fucking your shit up, you just didn’t go near the ocean.  
  
"Indeed," Daniel said calmly, but his eyes had narrowed minutely. "Luckily, shipping was the least of my business."  
  
Daniel paused for a moment and drank from his glass, emptying it before placing it on the table nearby.  
  
"I am sure you have heard about the recent disappearances," Daniel said pointedly.  
  
It wasn't a question, but I answered anyway.  
  
"People are vanishing from trains while they are running, their bodies have been appearing afterward somewhere on the tracks," I said quietly, recalling the news coverage. "The Protectorate was guarding them last I'd heard."  
  
They still were as far as I knew, but I wasn’t really keeping track of the situation though.  
  
"Yes," Daniel confirmed, before leaning forward in his chair. "They have been attempting to have at least one hero on each of the trains that are leaving the city."  
  
Obviously, this wasn't working, seeing as there were way more trains then there were heroes to guard them. When all the shipping business had started to die, trains had become even more useful than before, and the industry had grown exponentially in the decades since.  
  
"However, the night before last there was another disappearance." Daniel frowned, before looking out of the large floor to ceiling window. "This time from one of the trains that had a hero onboard, Miss Militia I believe."  
  
I stared at him for a moment, this I hadn't known, the last I'd heard about this was a week ago, with the serial killer yoinking people off trains. Police had routinely failed to do anything meaningful since then, and they were now suspecting that it was a Parahuman responsible, but no confirmation had appeared. The heroes had been brought in soon after, but even they were struggling to find anything amiss with the trains.  
  
"A body showed up on the tracks the next day, missing a leg and most of its torso." Daniel said, "It was clearly a message to the heroes."  
  
The message was clear, they couldn't find them, and they couldn't stop them, not even heroes.  
  
"Whoever is doing it is messing with your main source of business," I said to him in understanding, it was obvious now that I had most of the details. "You want me to deal with them."  
  
Daniel watched me quietly for a moment, the woman at the piano had once again stopped playing a little while ago, still having not finished the song in its entirety, she was now facing us both and listening to the conversation. Her dress was riding up her thighs and it was super distracting, I forced myself to stop looking.  
  
"I want you to find out who is it." Daniel agreed evenly. "They are causing a great deal of trouble for me."  
  
"Alright," I said easily, "What do you want me to do when I find them?"  
  
The woman was looking back and forth between us with each exchange, the motion was doing wonderful things to her tight dress. I tore my gaze away again before looking back to Daniel.  
  
"Do with them what you will." Daniel said calmly, "Kill them or turn them into the police I suppose, I want to stay uninvolved in the narrative, however."  
  
Daniel said it without care while making a gesture with his hand, palm facing upwards as if it was of no consequence to him. The woman drew in a sharp breath when he had said to kill them, and she leaned forward with her eyes open wide. I forced myself to stop looking at her chest, goddammit lady.  
  
Investigate, find the killer, capture them, it was straight forward enough.  
  
"Payment?" I said calmly.  
  
"One-hundred thousand." Daniel declared languidly, completely unaffected by the number.  
  
My eyes were now wide behind my mask and my heart thundered in my chest, holy shit, this guy was stacked, none of my jobs since the first had ever crested five thousand, this was fucking unheard of, what the fuck man. The woman was staring at Daniel like he was the most interesting man in the world, and I could just about see it, the guy was a charismatic beast of a man.  
  
Damn Daniel, back at it again.

* * *

I had agreed, obviously, there was no way I was going to turn down one-hundred thousand, completely legitimate dollars. Daniel had apparently already sent it on to Coil in our usual method, with a seventy-thirty split. Coil would be happy no doubt, thirty thousand in the bank for ringing a dude, the bastard was living the dream.  
  
I was already mentally spending the money, planning to sell my new apartment as soon as I finished the job and buy a larger place that was further away from the ocean. Moving up in the world bitches, fame, and fortune here I come.  
  
I started investigating the murders straight away, money was a particularly good motivator after all. I went to my computer and started pulling up articles about the recent missing people, there was a lot to cover so I'll do my best to summarize.  
  
People started going missing on the 1st of April, the killer seemed to strike every second day and if a day was missed due to interference from the authorities even more bodies showed up on the tracks. On the 7th of April when the fourth person went missing, the police had shut down the trains with the hope that by removing the killers hunting ground they might stop. The public tore them apart for the decision, the authorities had failed to keep them safe and now the public was being punished, commuters especially were pissed off.  
  
The police assured them they were doing everything they could to find the killer and then two days later several bodies were found on the tracks. Another two days and even more bodies appeared. After the third time, they cut their losses, it didn't matter if the trains were running or not people were still dying. The police quickly released a statement that they would be bringing the trains back online and that they refused to bow to the sick whims of a serial killer. They ratcheted up the security provided for the trains and every single train had at least a single police officer on it, but the murders still didn't stop.  
  
The Protectorate had started riding the trains in full combat gear on the 15th of April and then a person vanished from the train that Miss Militia was protecting, the body appeared on the tracks soon after mutilated beyond recognition. The Protectorate took a hit to its reputation and Miss Militia had been hidden away since then, staying out of the angry eyes of the press. It wasn't their fault, of course, the Protectorate member probably hadn't even seen the killer. They were trying to catch the killer and I knew that they were doing their best.  
  
If the pattern continued to stay the same, another person would vanish from the train tonight and appear on the tracks in the morning. I couldn't just get onto a random train and hope for the best, a lot of different people had obviously already tried this. I could also only be in a single place at a time, so I would need to come at this from a different angle entirely.  
  
I had to think like a crazy person.  
  
The thing that stood out to me the most was that it was happening on a train, obvious I know, but why a train of all places, the killer was obviously attached to trains in some way.  
  
Maybe he was born on a train, or her best friend died protecting her from one. Perhaps his parents had been taken before their time by one of the metal monstrosities? I flinched at that one, my brain getting ahead of myself. Did she had a relative that had died on a train? Did his girlfriend dump him on a train, maybe her girlfriend dumped her on a train? Maybe he was that cape called Trainwreck, who was now trying to gain vengeance for all his disassembled brethren, or was it Trainwreck's ex-girlfriend, trying to gain vengeance on him? Did she have a traumatic experience on a train like that dirty manga he read once, or maybe his father had bought him a toy train before he vanished like in that one movie? What could the motive of a serial killer be, who had a thing for trains?  
  
I didn't know yet, but I was going to find out.


	10. Chapter 10

18th, April 2010, Friday, 5:00 AM.  
  
What could drive someone to kill?  
  
Normal people didn’t just decide to murder a bunch of people for no reason, there had to be some kind of external force that put them under enough pressure before they were driven to kill. Something like a feeling of being trapped with no way out, a singular moment of passion, defending oneself or even their loved ones, jealousy, hate, rage, and self-loathing were all reasons people would act upon another, these types of murderers burnt brightly and vanished quickly.  
  
Serial killers were a much more nebulous creature, they already had a driving force behind them, something that led them to specific actions and specific places. They followed elaborate patterns, and they held a sick pride in keeping to them. They placed rules upon themselves, almost like a code of conduct, and rarely deviated from them of their own volition.  
  
The train killer was most definitely the second type, there was an easily recognized pattern to the murders, it always every second day, always a different time but never the same train twice in a row. The killer would sometimes attack during the day, but the vast majority of the victims disappeared during the night.  
  
The media for some reason had felt the need to give the murderer a nickname like some type of trophy. It was also a stupid name if I were being honest, and I couldn’t help but think that if he weren’t already a killer, the name alone might have driven them to kill. I was seriously waiting for the killer to start working double time in revenge for the stupid name, but I was getting distracted. I wasn't going to use the name in silent protest, I'd refer to them simply as the train killer.  
  
Train accidents, train deaths, train enthusiasts, and train-related people, I looked into them all but in order to convert this data into something useful, I had to start making some assumptions, It would allow me to narrow my field of view enough to decide on a course of action.  
  
First, the killer was obviously a cape, incredible deduction sherlock! I hear you say, well fuck you, avoiding detection from the civilians, police, cameras, and capes that were present during the crime was no easily dismissed feat. I certainly couldn't do it, not without destroying the cameras first at least. The killer had never been seen, and all the victims had just vanished when they were outside of any camera's frame of reference, nobody had seen a thing not even the capes on board.  
  
The second piece of information that pointed towards it being a cape that some might have overlooked, some of the victims were rather large people, people who easily weighed over one-hundred kilograms in some cases, manhandling a person that large would be no easy task if you had no enhanced strength or ability that was relevant to the task and it would have been even harder if you consider trying to carry someone away without being seen or heard.  
  
As I said, the killer was obviously a cape, this gave me a place to start from, even if it wasn't much. So, with that information in mind, I was looking at all the train-related shenanigans over the last twenty years. Twenty years? I hear you ask, why was I looking all the way back twenty years? Well, for a cape to trigger in the first place, they needed to have a trigger event, which was usually either an incredibly positive experience or a very traumatic experience, at least that was the popular theory. Most capes apparently triggered somewhere between the ages of twelve and thirty, with the odd rare exception, again this was all information I discovered on the internet, so I was taking it with a grain of salt.  
  
Assuming the information was correct, it is very probable that the train killer is at least twelve years old and no older than thirty. The killer’s theme seemed to be killing people on trains, which probably meant that they had experienced a train-related accident or incident somewhere in their past. At least I thought that the probability seemed high, I also felt that it was likely a train-related event that ended up with survivors, obviously because the train killer was alive and not at all dead. Although it was possible that the killer hadn't been on a train at all, and that it was a family member or loved one that had been involved in an incident involving trains, but still either way I was on to something, at least I thought so.  
  
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that the killer must have actually triggered in a train accident, although that's not at all off the table, they might have triggered a long time ago, and only just recently developed an issue with trains. Alternatively, they could have had some sort of train-related trauma in the past, and they had very recently triggered, suddenly finding themselves with the power to act on old grudges.  
  
In either case, an incident with a train still seemed highly likely, I had a gut feeling, with no actual evidence to support it, that the killer had triggered recently. The killer had started killing people at the start of this month after all, to me, that sounded like someone had just triggered and started using their powers to kill people, in a once every two-day cycle. It was a bit of a stretch, without any evidence to just assume it, I'll admit.  
  
I had also learned during my investigation that apparently there is only about one parahuman in a population size of eight thousand people, an interesting factoid that was rather relevant.  
  
Brockton bay had many capes, compared to the population size and there were no-doubt even more hidden away that nobody knew about, seeing as I was one of those hidden capes, at least until last year.  
  
This led me to the second branch in the killer's identity tree, had they been a cape for years? Did something happen to the killer to make them suddenly developed an interest in trains?  
  
Something that would cause them to start killing people on them.  
  
The only Brockton Bay cape that had anything to do with a train was Trainwreck and it was just a name, besides I was pretty sure I could eliminate this guy as a possibility I mean, it obviously wasn't him, sure he had the strength to toss people off a train with ease, but he would have been seen ten times over, he was a massive guy, noisy and was generally followed with a large amount of smoke, he was not exactly subtle.  
  
So it was likely that either the cape had only just arrived in Brockton bay recently, or that they had been here for a while but had never revealed themselves after they had triggered. The first felt unlikely for some reason, but I couldn't put my finger on why I felt that way. The best argument I could find against it was that, why would they come to Brockton Bay to kill people?  
  
It was a strange place to go to straight out of the blue, something felt wrong about that argument, but I wasn't sure what it was. Ah, I was banking on the crazy train killer to not be completely insane, that was it.  
  
To wit; A person, thirty or under, train-related in some way, a cape; recently triggered or hidden and never revealed, something set them off at the end of March.  
  
I would need to figure out any train-related things that happened in March, but I think that I could safely assume these things were at least mostly correct, It was a start at least. At the end of my research, I had created four folders on my computer, one of which was completely empty.  
  
The first was simply labeled 'Train accidents', and it was filled with all of the incidents that I could find that had ended with injuries or deaths by trains in the last twenty years before I had filtered it down to just Brockton Bay accidents, I was shocked. I could not believe how many accidents happened on these damn things; it was astounding.  
  
I had always thought that trains were relatively safe, but apparently every year there was at least one train collision or derailment that killed hundreds of people, sometimes multiple. In Brockton Bay alone, within the last twenty years, there had been a grand total of seven train accidents, one derailment, one collision, and three minor incidents.  
  
The collision had killed twenty people but ended up with seventy-four seriously injured, there weren't any standouts within that pool, but the train killer could potentially have been any one of them. The derailment on the other hand was more promising, it had killed one-hundred-and-thirty-one passengers, which seemed a like a massive loss of life for a singular accident, and there was only a single survivor to the derailment: a young boy.  
  
This kid was immediately my first suspect, it seemed so obvious that I couldn't believe nobody had figured out it was him yet. I looked the kid up on the internet, there was zero doubt in my mind that he was the killer his backstory was almost like the plot of a movie. I was sure that I would find that the kid went on to become a maniac or mysteriously disappeared. Instead, all I found was that he drowned in 2003. Shit, okay, I clearly got a little bit ahead of myself there, I should try and be less attached to any suspect.  
  
The second folder was labeled 'Train related', and it was filled with people who were publicly involved in trains within the city, stakeholders, employees or otherwise. Seeing as I had no fucking idea who worked at the train station or even who drove the trains, I was going to have to go get that information the hard way, tomorrow.  
  
Operation: Rob a train station, better name pending.  
  
There were three big names that stood out however, all three had been very pro-train in Brockton Bay following the shipping industries' death. And they had each been very public figures of some renown. One of these was dead, with no surviving family, it clearly wasn't that guy or his immediate relatives. The second guy was no longer in Brockton Bay and had moved on to do a tv show on daytime television, so it probably wasn’t him either.  
  
The only remaining figure was a man named Roy Christner, he had advocated for more railways to be built in Brockton Bay for years and he seemed to like the idea of privatized transport. Almost a decade and change later, he was now the Mayor of Brockton Bay.  
  
Coincidence? I think not.  
  
Interestingly or not, the man was 56 years old so he didn't fit into the parameters I had set to narrow the data down, and it was unlikely that the mayor would randomly start killing people. Rich people tended to commit fewer crimes than poorer people, for a variety of reasons and I couldn't think of a motive that fit for him to kill people on the trains that he had advocated for.  
  
I investigated him some more anyway and quickly found that he was married and that he also had a son who went to Arcadia, the kid was in my very year in fact. We were the same age, I blinked, that was a bit too much of a coincidence. A boy who fits the age bracket for most likely to trigger had a parent that had spent years advocating for more trains, a boy who also went to Arcadia.  
  
The school with all the capes.  
  
Rory Christner skyrocketed to the top of the list of suspects, and I did my best to think back to my classes, trying to remember if I had ever seen the kid before, or even heard his name. I managed to find a picture of the kid standing with his family for a photo, he was tall, wide-shouldered, and had a lot of defined muscle on his arms, he looked to be the sporty type.  
  
What could the motive be, I tried to put myself in his shoes. Big, blonde, and rich, probably plays sports, likely popular, maybe some sort of daddy issues? Is Dad too busy for his son maybe? So Rory wants to strike out at his father, in secret, he goes and kills people on a train to make his dad look bad, because once upon a time he advocated for it?  
  
It didn't seem like an extraordinarily strong motive, and it didn't really feel very convincing. I would have bought it as the plotline in an anime, and it probably would not have broken my suspension of disbelief, but in the real world, the motive seemed way too weak. I would table it for now and come back once I'd found some more suspects.  
  
The third folder was labeled 'Daniel Stansfield', and it was filled with all of the information I could gather on the man, that's right, you little bitches, you thought I would overlook the obviously suspicious guy, that had unlimited money and who owns the vast majority of the railroads.  
  
Daniel Stansfield was sketchy as fuck, he was even older than the Mayor, at a whopping 65 years old, which was such bullshit because the guy looked to be in his early fifties at most. Daniel was married, but I couldn't find any information about his wife anywhere, what was he doing messing about with beautiful young women like miss red dress?  
  
Naughty, naughty.  
  
I didn't think Daniel himself was personally sneaking around on trains, killing people and then for no reason suddenly decided to hire a mercenary to track himself down. Not unless he was exactly as crazy as you would expect the train murderer to be, maybe he was hoping to get me into a compromising position and then pin the entire thing on me? Seemed needlessly convoluted, but it was possible.  
  
Daniel had two sons, one of whom had run off to join a circus a couple of years ago, I am not even kidding either, the dude actually joined a circus. I thought that only happened in movies, rich people were so fucking weird, he left Brockton Bay almost a decade ago, so I could move past that guy as a suspect.  
  
Now, this is where things get spicy, the youngest son of Daniel Stansfield, believe it or not, also went to Arcadia and what was the likelihood of running into two dudes who both had sons at my school. Alright maybe it wasn't completely unlikely, but this was still suspicious as fuck, why was it suspicious as fuck you ask?  
  
If Daniel Stansfield had a superpower, it could be boiled down to unlimited money, he was calm, measured and was known for his incredible business acumen. Daniel was a well-educated man, with a taste for the finer things in life, so ask yourself why would a man with these descriptors send his son to a shitty public school? That same argument works for the mayor as well actually, Roy was also rich, although not even remotely in the same league as Daniel Stansfield, but still a multi-millionaire at the very least.  
  
Why did they both send their sons to Arcadia?  
  
I could think of reasons why the sons might want to go there, it was full of superheroes after all, but that wasn't the kind of decision a child would get to make for themselves, in any case. There was even a top-tier private school right here in the city, Immaculata. Instead, their parents had both chosen a public school, they both sent their kids to Arcadia for some bizarre reason. What could be a potential reason they would have to send their kids to a school full of superheroes?  
  
Oh, I am an idiot, I wrote out my conclusions and stared at the words on the screen.

* * *

1 Dean Stansfield - Likely a cape. It could be Triumph, Clockblocker, or a hidden cape.  
  
2 Rory Christner - Likely a cape. It could be Triumph, Clockblocker, or a hidden cape.  
  
3 Daniel Stansfield - Too old to be a cape, probably aware that his son is a cape. Probably unaware his son is secretly a murdering psychopath.

4 Roy Christner - Too old to be a cape, probably aware that his son is a cape. Probably unaware his son is secretly a murdering psychopath.  
  
5 David Dunn - Supposedly dead, could you be secretly alive??? Narratively a perfect fit for a suspect.

* * *

I stared at my conclusions for a long time, wondering if I had made any mistakes it was possible that I was wrong about everything, but I felt like I had reasoned myself well into these answers. I was also quite sure that I couldn't just go and ask Daniel if his son was the killer. If Daniel were the killer he would try and kill me for obvious reasons. If Dean were the killer, and I told Daniel that I suspected his son, he might try to cover it up or he could use his unlimited money to whoop my ass.  
  
I would have to be on the lookout for hired capes suddenly crawling out of the woodwork.  
  
If it were Rory on the other hand, I would be safe from reprisal, the guy didn't have unlimited money, although he could still easily drop an anonymous bounty on my head. He was the Mayor though, maybe he would turn the media against me or kick me out of the city or something. What the fuck does a mayor even do anyway?  
  
I managed to find more recent pictures of both Rory and Dean in our school photos. Rory Christner and Dean Stansfield were both Caucasian with blonde hair, and they were both tall with big shoulders they could have been brothers, if not for their widely different facial features.  
  
Clockblocker was covered head to toe, with no exposed skin, he very well could be Caucasian. He was, however, rather slim, with much smaller shoulders than either of the sons, neither of them really fit Clockblocker's build so they probably weren't him.  
  
Triumph, on the other hand, was definitely Caucasian and also a big guy with broad shoulders, so I was mostly certain at this point that either Rory Christner or Dean Stansfield was Triumph, it just made too much sense. Through the process of elimination, one of them was Triumph, the other was the train killer. Well, I suppose the other could just be a hidden cape with nothing to do with this at all, but I thought it was unlikely. Triumph had once told me he was 'going to have to bring me in'. I wondered if I would recognize his voice if I heard it again in person.  
  
Looks like I was going to school tomorrow after all.

* * *

Friday, 2:37 PM.  
  
Rory Christner was in the same year as me, and somehow I had managed to never see the guy before, we shared exactly one class, home economics. I watched as he beat a bunch of eggs in a bowl while trying to picture him instead beating up criminals in the bowl or beating people to death on a train, the pink apron was throwing me off, I couldn't see it at all.  
  
Rory managed to go roughly two minutes without speaking before the girl next to him started chatting happily to him and the second he spoke I immediately knew he was Triumph. It was like an electric pulse shot down my spine, I had been sharing a class with a cape this entire time, a cape that I had fought against twice. The number of times that I had tried to figure out if one of the new transfers were capes, only to be foiled by a lack of information and here he was the entire time, completely under my radar. I stared at him until he turned and caught me looking.  
  
I nodded at him, he smiled confidently and nodded back.  
  
Dean Stansfield was in the year below me, and I didn't share any classes with the guy for obvious reasons. I did manage to find him right at the end of the day, he was walking to the front gate with another dude that had brown hair, he was Caucasian as well but had a noticeably darker skin tone. They were talking quietly to themselves as they walked, I frowned, they were huddled together and were obviously discussing something they didn't want others to overhear, slightly too far away for me to hear.  
  
The unknown guy was fit, and his arm muscles were well defined, but not big. I stepped past them and I caught his name when Dean said he would meet him downtown in an hour, Chris.  
  
I burnt 'Chris's' face into my mind, It might be a normal guy, or it could be another cape. I watched them go, Chris jumped on a bus while Dean got into a limo, not that unusual for the richer kids. I could probably expect that Chris would take another bus later to meet his friend downtown, while Dean would probably get dropped off with another limo. Where would they go, could I figure it out in time?  
  
It turns out that I couldn't.  
  
I had no idea where they were going and there were hundreds of bus stops downtown, tracking the limo was equally impossible for me. I needed more information on Dean, and I could only think of one thing to do in this situation, I was going to have to break into his house.  
  
Daniel was going to be pissed.


	11. Chapter 11

Saturday, 19th, April. 2:30 AM.  
  
I was just this side of useless when I first woke up, my eyes were always blurry, and my mind just struggled to focus on anything. I would be stuck like this until I had a shower or drank something caffeinated, so I made my way to the bathroom, completely nude, clothes were for people who weren't really, really, really, ridiculously good looking. I shot my best attempt at 'Blue Steel' to the stick creature in the mirror, eh, needs some work.  
  
I turned on the hot water and immediately sat down on the floor of the shower, letting the water gently pull me into a state where I could actually use my brain but it kind of had the opposite effect, all of my worries washed away with the hot water and I am fairly sure I drifted off to sleep again at some point, because when I next checked the time It was almost an hour later.  
  
When I finally emerged from the shower the water had turned me into a close approximation of a dried-up prune, I quickly toweled-dried myself before shaking my head wildly like a dog. Water sprayed all over the place and I grinned before wandering out of the bathroom feeling much better than when I had entered it.  
  
I poured some water into the kettle before turning it on, taking a moment to put some coffee into a mug, and then sat down at the kitchen bench, to wait for the water to boil. It seemed as if an eternity had passed before the kettle finally clicked off, I quickly poured the hot water into the mug, and added a dash of milk, I took a sip of my creation and it was lovely. After a couple of minutes, my brain finally started to wake up and with its awakening, came the deluge of things that needed to be addressed for the day, specifically I had two big goals that I needed to work on today, and they took priority over everything else.  
  
The first of those goals was the Brockton Bay Train Station, I was going to break into the office building to get at their staffing records, It was the only category that I had brainstormed yesterday that I hadn't been able to do anything about without physical access to their computers. I needed to see if I could find anything strange going on with the train staff, I honestly didn't think I would find anyone suspicious, I had my heart set on Dean being the killer, but it bore investigating none the less. It was entirely possible that the little old cleaning ladies were secretly ferrying people out of the train in bins and buckets, I took another sip of my coffee.  
  
My second goal was in the same vein, I was going to have to break into Daniel Stansfield's mansion to spy on his son. Dean Stansfield, currently my prime suspect, but I might even find something about his father too I suppose. If I could find out some hidden motive, like Dean was lashing out against his father for having affairs with women like miss red dress. I wondered once again exactly where Mrs. Stansfield had vanished too.  
  
A realization suddenly cut through my thoughts and I couldn't believe that I hadn't thought of it already, what if there was more than one killer? What if Dean and his father Daniel were in it together? What if this was a group of people working together? It was like my brain had suddenly found a million possibilities that I had somehow overlooked yesterday, and I was abruptly sure that I was now on the completely wrong track.  
  
Heh, track.  
  
What if somebody was Mastering all of the train occupants, and that's why there were no witnesses. I hadn't even thought to consider what Dean's power could be if he actually had one,  
  
I was pretty stuck on the idea that he was secretly a cape, but what if I was wrong? What if I was right? I didn't want to get mastered and then thrown off a train or something.  
  
I took a deep breath and tried to calm down, I could only do what I could do, I told myself. If I were wrong I would revisit my notes and go for the next suspect on the list. I had all the time in the world to figure this out, it's not like people's lives were at stake or anything, I swallowed the rest of my coffee.  
  
I left my apartment less than five minutes later.

* * *

Saturday, 19th, April. 3:37 AM.  
  
The train station was awfully empty at this time of the morning, it was still dark out and there were more than a few people sleeping under the benches or tucked into corners underneath various objects, they were each dressed in worn but thick clothing, and some of them even had blankets.  
  
Brockton Bay had always had a large homeless population, but that didn't mean that the city was kind to them. They were all exceedingly likely to get recruited, beaten, or killed by one of the gangs if they were unfortunate enough to have wandered into the wrong area. I can't imagine it was a good city to be stuck in with no house and no money. I dragged my gaze away from them with some difficulty.  
  
I had a job to do.  
  
The platform’s floor was covered in large white tiles, small cracks and chips ran through almost every single one. There were green painted benches that had been worn down to the metal beneath, and a row of them lined the station, interposed by the thick steel columns that held the exterior roof up. The benches had raised dividers set into them, to make it inconvenient for the homeless to sleep on. There was a building to one side of the station, made from brick with a durable metal door and a security mesh window, it could only be for the physical ticket sales.  
  
Right in the middle of the station was a set of train tracks, running parallel the building, on the side of the tracks opposite me, there was a sign that read, 'Welcome to Brockton Bay Station.'  
  
The 'B' in 'Bay' was crossed out and replaced by a capital 'G'. I snorted in amusement and the woman under the nearest bench made a muffled noise in her sleep.  
  
I generated a thin wire and sent it into the lock on the door before unlocking the door, I slipped into the building a moment later to find the inside of the room was split into segments with shoulder-high dividers, each section had a desk, a computer, and a phone. Phone operators, I guessed, the people you spoke to when you called the station, there were a total of four doors connected to the main room. I checked all of the rooms one by one, the first was a simple bathroom, the door was already unlocked, and I looked around the room in disgust, these people were absolute animals, clean your fucking bathroom!  
  
The second door was locked and led to a small storeroom, it was filled with bits and pieces; bright orange road cones, slippery when wet signs and other paraphernalia covered the shelves. The third room was also locked but much more interesting, it housed a desk and a bunch of monitors, obviously the security system for the station, it was pretty cool if I was being honest but not really what I was looking for. This was the first thing the police would have checked and if they had not found the identity of the killer from the camera feed then I had even less chance of accomplishing the feat.  
  
The last room was where I hit the jackpot, it held a single large desk that was facing the door, a computer monitor sat on the middle of the desk and filing cabinets lined the walls of the room. I sat down at the desk and turned the computer on, which took almost thirty seconds to actually locate the power button, this thing looked to be at least ten years old. I worked it out eventually but immediately hit my next roadblock when a company logo popped up, asking for a username and password.  
  
Fuck, I hadn't thought this far ahead.  
  
I looked around the desk to see if I could find anything useful, like a list of old passwords or something but found nothing of interest, I used some more wires to pick the locks on the cabinets before checking them all as well. The first two cabinets had nothing of note, mostly just old paperwork that had nothing to do with staff.  
  
The third drawer, however, had a sticky note adhered to the inside of the door.

Spoiler: The Note

Got you, bitch.

* * *

Saturday, 19th, April. 6:37 AM.  
  
Several hours later I felt like a mess and couldn’t help the string of yawns that followed one after another. I rubbed bleakly at my eyes, desperately wishing for more coffee. I was seated on one of the benches right next to the train tracks, once again wearing plain clothes, my costume hidden safely in a bag by my side, I looked at the clock again with disgust, ugh. I was always besieged by a wave of tiredness if I woke up before my normal time it would persist until I did something physical or ate something.  
  
I tried not to consider this trip a failure, but it seemed like such a waste of time in hindsight, I morosely watched a young conductor with auburn hair help an elderly lady take her luggage onto the train, his name tag said 'Felix', the old woman thanked him profusely with a kind smile as he used his arm to help her step up into the train.  
  
I sighed.  
  
I had checked everything that I had access to on the computer and all of the cabinets. There was plenty of information, staff names, schedules, and shift times for each employee but all of the recent hires were on the up and up, the cleaning ladies probably weren't murderous little Baba Yaga's in disguise. I had found nothing suspicious, not a single thing that struck me as strange or out of place. I copied everything I could find onto a USB and took it with me anyway.  
  
I would be able to look it all over more carefully when I was at home, where I wasn't worrying if someone might be about to show some initiative and come to work early. I had gotten a bunch of information, that had to be worth something I guess, I needed to stay positive. I still had other leads, so it wasn't a total bust.  
  
I tried not to worry that I had missed something important, tried not to think that if I had only been a little smarter I would have found the thread that would unravel the entire plot. I couldn't think that way, it would lead to madness it looks like I was going to do this the hard way after all.

* * *

Saturday, 19th, April. 9:23 PM.  
  
Damn Daniel.  
  
The house if you could call it that, was gargantuan, it looked like the kind of mansion that beat the shit out of all the smaller weaker mansions at recess. The property had a sprawling green field that stretched the entire way to the 'house' and there were plenty of trees that dotted the yard, thick, green, and lively looking things. A large water fountain sat in front of the building, bubbling away merrily, and surrounded by beautiful dark brickwork. A single paved road led straight up to the fountain circled it once, and then continued onto the front doors.  
  
The yard had to have been kept professionally maintained what with the perfectly straight cuts, and the entire thing was surrounded by a tall wrought iron fence, ornate looking spikes adorned the top of each thin pole. The front gate itself had a large golden 'S' that traveled right down the middle curling onto both sides, what a fucking liberty.  
  
The fence didn’t slow me down for an even a second, as I simply hopped over it before running over to the closest tree, nobody came sprinting out of the house to beat the crap out of me so I was pretty sure I was still in the clear, I moved to another closer tree and still, nobody appeared. I quickly worked my way as close to the building as I dared before stopping, there was something of a no-mans-land directly around the house, it was clear of any obstructions and there was absolutely nothing for me to hide behind. I would have to be careful if I decided to approach the house.  
  
I spotted Dean way before that ever became an issue, the guy was working out in a massive room filled with expensive-looking gym equipment. The interior lights were on and all of the windows were open, as were most of the windows in the house, I guess he wasn’t afraid of somebody trying to rob him, fucking rich people. I booked it out of sight of the window and made sure to stay low to the ground as I circled around the trees looking for a better angle to watch him.  
  
As if to spite me, just as I got into a good position he finished up his workout. Dean turned the lights off and left the room, eventually, I required my target as the lights on the upper floor turned on. I moved into a better position again, this time I climbed up into one of the trees that towered over even the mansion's impressive height.  
  
I had a peek through the binoculars I'd purchased several months ago, finally having a chance to use them outside of my apartment. Dean was now sitting at a desk and looking down at something I couldn't see, he looked to his left abruptly before grabbing at something out of frame, it ended up being a phone. Shit, if I wanted to know what he was saying, I would need to be closer than this.  
  
I moved further along the branch of the tree, maybe I would find I had a secret talent for lip reading, wouldn't that be awesome? I suddenly remembered a joke I had heard once about a deaf gynecologist and stifled a snort. I never managed to find out about the lip-reading as Dean suddenly turned and kicked his legs up onto the bed beside him.  
  
I could see the desk now, that he had spun mostly out of the way, there were two rectangular pieces of paper sitting on top of it. With help from my binoculars, I was able to see that they were fancy train tickets. The tickets were a deep red color with burgundy borders, 'Single' was written across the top in large shinning golden letters. The only other piece of information I could see was the time of departure, it was in a larger font than the rest, in the same stylized golden font, 11:30 PM Departure.  
  
It didn't look a thing like any train ticket I had ever seen, it was obviously expensive, I was sure that if I could find the date of departure and the train's destination I would be able to save myself a lot more effort down the line. I moved to another tree, the one that was closest to the house, the last one on my side of the no-mans-land, the perfectly cut green grass was all that stood between my tree and the house. As if I had crossed an invisible line Dean suddenly turned and looked directly at me, fuck that shit I'm out.  
  
I fled.

* * *

Saturday, 19th, April. 9:27 PM.  
  
Dean Stansfield clicked on the light in his bedroom before glancing out of the window, eyes passing over the lawn without really seeing anything at all. He sat down at his desk before picking up one of the tickets that he had left there earlier.  
  
Dean wondered if he were making a mistake, he also wondered if he could actually find the part of him that would care if he did. He dropped the ticket back down onto the desk and leaned back into his chair with a sigh. His phone abruptly started ringing loudly causing him to jump at the sudden noise, before laughing at his own jumpiness, he quickly snatched the phone up and hit the big green button.  
  
"Hello?" Dean said easily, having a decent idea on who it was without having to check the number.  
  
"Hey man," Chris answered excitedly.  
  
"Chris," Dean replied with a smile.  
  
They had known each other for more than a year now, at first, Dean had thought the friendliness had been because he was rich, a lot of people had tried to befriend him based on that in the past. It wouldn't have surprised him if that had been the case, but instead, Chris hadn't even known who he was, it was both refreshing and annoying at the same time. The passive use of his powers definitely helped in figuring out who was genuine and who wasn’t.  
  
It had only taken him a couple of months to figure out that his new friend was actually one of the Wards. After they started hanging out Dean had immediately noted the many sudden disappearances at school and the surges of excitement that preceded them. Little injuries that had gone unnoticed and when he pointed them out Chris would hide them away in embarrassment, total overreactions.  
  
One day Dean had casually asked Chris if Skidmark had hit him very hard. I had seen part of the fight that Kid Win had been a participant of televised on the news and Chris had straight up told him that it was actually Mush that had hit him, before realizing exactly what he had just revealed. Chris had freaked out and it was absolutely hilarious at the time. Dean had quickly revealed that he also had powers to help calm him down and prove that he wasn't going to suddenly unmask him to everybody at school.  
  
Chris had been trying to get him to join the wards ever since and about a week ago Dean had made him a deal. If Chris came with him to meet his estranged brother for the first time in years, Dean would join the Wards. Chris told him that he would have come even if Dean hadn't agreed to join the wards, he was a good friend. Dean distantly realized that he was going to need a hero name soon.  
  
"Are we still doing it?" Chris asked nervously and he felt his lips twitch.  
  
"Yeah." Dean replied evenly, "I bought the tickets already. We leave Monday night at eleven-thirty."  
  
"I'm going to get in so much trouble if anybody finds out," Chris said wryly, but he sounded excited. "You owe me so bad."  
  
Dean laughed out loud at that, If Chris had known just how much the tickets had cost he wondered if his friend would have still thought that.  
  
"Yeah, man. Don't worry though, no one is going to find out." Dean promised quietly before he suddenly felt a burning curiosity flash into existence right on the edge of his range.  
  
It was outside the house, Dean turned and looked towards it before he saw a shadowed figure cut across the lawn in an instant, he felt a cold chill go down his spine at the sight.  
  
"Chris, I need to go," Dean said with false calm. "Thanks for having my back, I'll see you at the station on Monday."  
  
The sudden end to the conversation seemed to completely fly over Chris's head, or his friend might have just had no problems with the abruptness.  
  
"It's fine, man," Chris said happily, straight away. "I can't wait until we can hang out at the HQ though."  
  
Dean could tell he was grinning from his voice.  
  
"Me too man," Dean said honestly, despite the chilling thought of being watched. "I'll see you Monday."  
  
"Yeah," Chris said cheerfully. "I'll see you then."

* * *

Saturday, 19th, April. 9:40 PM.  
  
I didn't stop running until I was on the other side of the city, Dean had some type of sensory power, and it was suddenly highly likely that he might have been a Master after all. They needed to be able to affect things from a distance in order to control them right? Dean’s range had to be about thirty meters judging by how quickly he had reacted when I stepped into his range. I wondered if he could he tell capes and normies apart? Did each person feel unique to him? Was I screwed at school now as well?  
  
If I walked past him at school would Dean know it was me? I couldn't just not go to school, fuck. How did his power work!? Maybe I'm overreacting though, I'd been in the school with this guy for a couple of years and he had never picked me out of a crowd before, so I think I can safely assume that he couldn't tell if you were a cape at a glance, I would have to go to school to find out, fuck.  
  
Not to mention the train situation, I would have to figure out which day this was going to happen, the murders happened every second day and they never deviated, the next date in the pattern was Monday night. I would have to either follow Dean around to see if he went anywhere, which would be hard considering his sensory ability. The alternative was to go to the train station every second night at eleven-o-clock and hope I could spot him.  
  
I spent the rest of Saturday night and my entire Sunday worrying about the school issue while going over all of the information I had found at the train station. I was currently filtering through the information in different ways to try and find a particularly suspicious group of people to draw suspects from.  
  
The main demographic for train jobs were for men and women approaching the age of fifty, they absolutely dominated the staff. I had to filter it down to employees under thirty and it wiped out a massive portion of the names right from the start. I started removing anyone who had worked there for upwards of five years, thinking it rather unlikely that the killer would have been working there for that long, this left me with roughly a hundred people.  
  
I filtered it for Brockton Bay residents and ended up with around thirty people, we were getting somewhere this time, I could feel it. I did a google search on each of the thirty staff members but found nothing related to train accidents or incidents. I checked all the names who had social media presences that were publicly accessible, but none of them stood out as obviously evil or deranged, most of them were narcissists though.  
  
One of the staff was moonlighting as a cam-girl which ended up distracting me for a couple of hours, I'm not going to lie. I eventually ran into another dead end with this attempt, so I reset the search parameters and started all over again, this was going to take a while.  
  
Late Sunday afternoon I ended up making a breakthrough, not on the killer's identity, but on the ticket that was on Dean's desk. I learned that the ticket granted access to an incredibly special train, that was about to make its yearly trip. From Brockton Bay to Chicago, it ran once a year, every year, a transcontinental luxury train.  
  
Three guesses about who owned the train, and the first two don't count, it’s Daniel Stansfield, fuck you.  
  
The luxury train brought the newly rich and those who had inherited old money to witness its splendor, men, and woman from all over the world came just to ride on this trip. I couldn't understand it at all, it was just another train to me, what exactly was happening on this train? Why did people go there?  
  
I found some pictures of it online.  
  
It was decorated like a luxurious hotel, with incredible chandeliers and beautiful lacquered interiors. The windows were surrounded by large red curtains, fantastic art pieces from all over the world decorated the walls of the train, carved wood dominated the insides of the carriages, beautiful sprawling patterns and designs covered the ceiling, accentuated with false columns and archways.  
  
The train was a massively long and large thing, with games rooms, bars, private rooms and so much more. It was a majesty of high-class design and the more I learned about it the more I started to understand why people would want to ride on it. It was a beautiful machine of which I had seen nothing to compare to it, I had mentioned before that it was absurdly expensive, and I wasn't lying, If I sold my entire apartment I would almost be able to buy two tickets.  
  
What the hell went on in this train to justify a price tag like that? This had to be it, this was going to be the killer's next hunting ground, there was absolutely no way in hell that an obsessed train killer would pass up trying to kill someone on this thing. The transcontinental luxury train would be leaving the Brockton Bay Train Station tonight, at exactly eleven-thirty. I knew where they would be, and I knew when they would be there. All I had to do was sneak on board and stop them, I couldn't stop the thrill of excitement that raced up my spine at the thought.  
  
But first, it was nap time.

* * *

When 'The Flying Pussyfoot' left the Brockton Bay train station at exactly eleven-thirty, it held more passengers than tickets.


	12. Chapter 12

Sunday, 20th, April, 11:30 PM.  
  
When Dean stepped out of the limo he found his gaze immediately drawn to his best friend, who was standing right at the entrance of the train station, Chris was impossible to miss with his large red suitcase in hand. The limo driver brought his Dean’s own much smaller suitcase around from the back of the car and he quickly took it from the man before bidding him goodbye, the man tipped his cap when he left. Dean grabbed the handle of his suitcase and lifted it off the ground with ease, before closing the distance between them.  
  
"Dean!" Chris grinned, holding his hand for a high five. "I had to sneak out of the window, you know, and my dad almost caught me."  
  
Dean slapped his hand with a smile.  
  
"I'm glad he didn't." Dean said honestly, "I'm not sure I would be getting on the train if you didn't come with me."  
  
Dean was lying, of course, he would have gone on his own if he had too, but nevertheless he was grateful that somebody had actually wanted to come with him. Chris was dependable like that.  
  
"Nah, you still would have got on." Chris denied easily and started to drag his suitcase up the stairs, struggling with the weight of it.  
  
His costume was inside it, power armor, laser pistols, and even his hoverboard. They weren't stupid, there was supposedly a Parahuman murderer running around killing people on trains, they were going to need to be careful, just in case. Chris had already mentioned that the Wards had been told to stay far away from the situation and he was worried that this trip of theirs would be misread as him going against his orders.  
  
Dean on the other hand wasn't worried at all, even if the murderer did attack the train, it had absolutely nothing to do with them, they were here for one reason only, but if by some herculean twist of fate, chose Dean or Chris as his next victim, the killer would quickly find that they had come prepared and weren't defenseless. He was privately amused by the idea, that he or Chris might accidentally take down the killer through sheer chance.  
  
Dean bent down and grasped the other handle on the suitcase, helping Chris get it up the stairs. Once they were at the top and through the entrance, they approached the luxurious train before a man with a pristine white suit asked them for their tickets. Chris was staring into the open windows with wide eyes, having never seen anything like it. Dean handed the tickets over to the man who checked them thoroughly before giving him a smile and handing them back.  
  
The man helped them get their luggage onto the train before returning to his duties. Chris and Dean immediately went off exploring the train. A couple of girls their age smiled at them when they passed by and Chris was visibly embarrassed when they giggled at him. Dean elbowed his friend in the side before giving them a wink and they descended into peals of laughter. Dean found it relatively surprising that they weren’t the only teenagers on the train, but then again rich adults had rich kids, after all, the ratio was quite strong though, they were vastly outnumbered by the adult presence on the train.  
  
The two boys soon found a large carriage with lots of people sitting around talking with each other. Dean chose a table for them, pulling Chris down into the chair opposite him, before doing a cursory check of the occupants making sure to match emotions they were feeling to their faces. He couldn't see his brother anywhere yet, but he had promised to meet him, he would be here eventually of that Dean had no doubt. The train began to move suddenly, and Dean found himself practically vibrating with excitement, he was finally going to find out what had happened to his mother.

* * *

Sunday, 20th, April, 11:58 PM.  
  
Miss Militia stood in the third carriage from the back as the 'Flying Pussyfoot' slowly left the station, while Battery stood quietly beside her. They made sure to wait for several minutes before they began to slowly move through the train, surreptitiously evaluating the passengers but otherwise remaining unobtrusive.  
  
They were both sans uniform and wore their best dresses, both of which fell short of the kind of clothing that the paying passengers wore. Each of the heroes wore a blue half-mask that covered the bottom of their faces with a large white ‘P’ stamped onto it, denoting their affiliation with the Protectorate.  
  
Miss Militia was distinctly uncomfortable as the passed by the passengers, she could almost feel them studying her. They had tried to negotiate with Daniel Stansfield to allow them access to the train, but it had not gone well at all, and the man had immediately retreated behind a team of the best lawyers in America, who rebuffed them at every turn.  
  
The Protectorate had wanted the entire Brockton Bay branch to guard the Flying Pussyfoot, it was the obvious next choice for the Rail Tracer to target. It fit the time pattern and the train itself was such a tantalizing target that it was all but assured. Daniel Stansfield didn’t seem to care, and they were immediately declined, he absolutely did not want a bunch of Parahumans running around on his train.  
  
Daniel had offered them an olive branch eventually, exactly two heroes would be allowed to board the train and there would be many conditions. No weapons, no armor, no men, they had to sign non-disclosure agreements, they would not be able to discuss anything they witnessed during the course of the Flying Pussyfoots journey, the only concession being that of the Rail Tracer, they would not harass, interrogate, interact or otherwise engage with any of the passengers unless they were approached first, they would have to wear clothing appropriate to the venue, no visible weapons, which wasn’t too bad as she had a blade hidden in the belt tuck away under her dress pulled tight against her thigh a benefit of her power, she was never truly unarmed, she could easily turn that blade into a gun in an instant if the Rail Tracer appeared. Battery didn't need to carry a gun or a knife, as her body was already a weapon.  
  
It was the most constricting circumstances she had worked under in years, but it was also the only offer they had received that involved letting them enter the train at all. No armor, no tools, no opening carrying. Hannah felt awkward wearing the dress, a small, tight, blue thing that left her feeling awfully exposed. Battery had helped her pick it out the day before on an impromptu shopping adventure once they had gotten notice that they would be riding the train.  
  
Battery was dressed in a similar item, it was not quite the same design, and hers was black. Assault had let out a loud whistle when he had seen them back at the base, while Battery had been embarrassed but pleased at the appreciation, Miss Militia was simply embarrassed. Hannah found that the high heels were easy enough to walk in, once she got used to them at least, but they would quickly become a problem if they needed to move quickly, she would have to rip them off or snap the heel if any hostiles made an appearance.  
  
The fact that the Protectorate had agreed to this at all told her enough about the people they were dealing with, absurdly rich and powerful, with a team of lawyers that could tie up even an organization like the Protectorate for weeks on end. Hannah refocused her attention on the present before continuing to burn every face on the train into her mind, for later consideration. When she saw Kid Win in civilian clothes sitting next to a blonde boy she just stopped in the middle of the carriage and stared without comprehension.  
  
What?

* * *

Sunday, 20th, April, 11:58 PM.  
  
Joining Chorus had definitely been the best decision of Dune's life.  
  
Dune stood in his assigned staff carriage, where all of the servers and other staff were able to rest between their shifts. The uniform he was currently wearing had once belonged to a man named Tony, the man had been approaching sixty years old, and he had looked every year of it after Dune had taken his uniform.  
  
Tony had been the train conductor that would have been serving the second shift on the Flying Pussyfoot. He was supposed to alternate shifts with the other conductor every six hours, of course, by the time the second shift actually rolled around, everybody would have much bigger problems to worry about.  
  
Dune knew that if any of the other members of Chorus knew about what he had done they would be terribly upset, especially after he and the other non-powered members of the Chorus had been given such strict instruction. They had been given the addresses, names, and faces of their targets. They were then supposed to use the sleep bombs that Swallow had created with her power to knock their targets out. Once they had been knocked out, restrained, and locked up, they would take their uniforms before infiltrating the Flying Pussyfoot as members of the staff.  
  
Nice, simple, and clean, but Dune hadn't felt like using the bombs.

* * *

Sunday, 20th, April, 11:59 PM.  
  
Felix Walken was the assistant conductor that had been assigned to the Flying Pussyfoot, he had only been working as an assistant for about a month, but his mentor had put in a good word for him when this opportunity had come up. It had made all the difference in getting the job, although he had needed to do some sleuthing behind the scenes to make sure it had worked out.  
  
Felix’s job wasn't terribly difficult, the conductor would give him instructions and he would carry them out, quite simple all in all. Sometimes that was just completing some inane paperwork that needed to be taken care of, other times it could be something as simple as fetching them both a nice cup of coffee.  
  
It was all so _strange_ he mused; his mind truly was an interesting place.  
  
Felix could admit that the Flying Pussyfoot was a truly majestic creation, even if he had seen it many, many times before, he even had a visit from his dear younger brother to look forward too, what an absolute treat. It had been quite a few years since they had last met, almost a decade even.  
  
Felix idly noted that a person had just flashed past the window of the train, before darting upwards onto the roof and out of view, thirty-seven thin wires branched out from under his clothing, glinting in the passing lights. The young man was wearing a ceramic oval mask and a black coat that split at the front, a couple of locks of loose black hair hung, just in view beneath the hood. The boy was one-hundred and ninety-three centimeters tall and weighed seventy-four kilograms; his forearms were not quite identical in length, the left one slightly shorter than the right, and there was an inch-long scar on his neck. It was the same young man that had been watching him yesterday when he had been helping an elderly woman onto the train. The elderly lady had been struggling with her bags and the boy had been sitting on a bench nearby.  
  
“How curious,” Felix wondered aloud.  
  
It was such a shame that he had been placed on the first shift, Felix probably wouldn't get to see very much of his mentor during the trip.

* * *

Sunday, 20th, April, 11:59 PM.  
  
I couldn't believe it, I was late.  
  
I stepped off the roof of my apartment building and started to fall downwards, I angled myself north-east while staying low to the ground and weaved my way between the alleyways to avoid anyone seeing me in the sky, It was best if I didn't attract any cape attention tonight. If the Flying Pussyfoot was under watch I would be looking very suspicious flying straight towards it at full speed from across the city. Once I was actually out of the city I would be able to really pour on the speed and try to get ahead of the train, then maybe I could work my way back along the tracks until I intercepted it.  
  
I had tried for a nap earlier today so that I would be at the top of my game when it was time to go, only I had not woken up when my alarm went off, I somehow slept through the damn thing.  
  
Fate or Destiny was clearly scheming against me, but I would fight against it and succeed despite the odds. The buildings were finally starting to thin out as I got closer to the edge of the city, it would not be long until I was free.  
  
I hoped that the killer hadn't decided to start early, I checked my watch briefly, or a late one in this case. I cleared the city boundaries before pushing myself to go faster, with no obstructions to worry about I could reach speeds that just wasn’t possible within the city. A couple of minutes later I spotted the train tracks, and to my complete surprise the train was almost completely level with me, I had barely made it after all.  
  
I came in at an angle towards the front carriage and then zipped up over the front window and onto the roof, landing without a sound, with nobody the wiser. I cheerfully made my way towards the back of the train, making sure to check for any stowaways on the roof.  
  
Heh, I still got it.

* * *

Monday, 21st, April, 12:03 AM.  
  
"Oh I'm so sad, so very sad, I feel as if I could never, ever reach a state in which I am happy again!" Graham Spectre said mournfully, with his hand placed dramatically upon his face.  
  
Chané Laforet on the other hand was conflicted, not being able to speak had made some very tense situations a lot worse during her masked adventures as Aural, not being able to explain to people that she _wasn't_ trying to kill them does that, she supposed. On the other hand, she had never felt pressured to speak up when she didn't want to, not like she had seen others do when confronted with the sheer intensity of Climax.  
  
Chané hid her smile behind her hand.  
  
Perhaps it would have been better to have had the choice to speak, and choose not to use it, rather than having the choice taken from her entirely, but she had a long time to make peace with her fate. It certainly wasn't something that was likely to change at this point, and so she watched Climax lean backward until he was almost parallel with the floor, before burying his face in his hands.  
  
"How could I ever reach happiness again?" Climax sobbed, grabbing the giant wrench off the table before thrusting it forward to emphasize his point, "When ‘happiness' is just a category that we have created? It’s not even something that _exists_ within nature, it is nothing more than a label that represents a set of common outcomes that we call happiness!”  
  
Climax gripped the chest of his blue overalls as if he were having an attack of the heart, an emotional attack, not an actual physical one, his face was scrunched up in painful emotion. When Chané had first met him, she had thought that Climax had simply been putting on a show, that he was an attention seeker that would say whatever he could to draw eyes his way. Which he certainly was at least a little, and the man definitely thrived in the spotlight. But nothing ever left his mouth that he didn't wholehearted believe in, even if he only believed it for a single moment, Climax would wax and wane, reach highs and lows that she could never come close to reaching, she almost envied his mood swings at times.  
  
Climax would then immediately turn back around and attack his own arguments, with no one there to attack it for him, the man was filled with some kind of unrelenting energy and Chané could already see his counterargument forming.  
  
"But," Climax said suddenly, with a manic energy, "If ‘happiness’ is nothing but a category, so too must 'sadness' be, so it stands to reason that I could not truly feel sad in the first place?!"  
  
Climax gripped his head between his hands as he grappled with the notion, but Chané just smiled and looked out the window of the carriage. Nice would be back soon, and then they could finally get to work.

* * *

Monday, 21st, April, 12:03 AM.  
  
Nice Holystone stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, the right side of her face and her right arm was a mess of burn scars, a single eye-patch covered her empty eye socket. Every time she saw herself in a reflection there was a surge of something painful in her chest and her eye started to water, her scarred face was a sick reminder of everything that been done to her, and all that had been taken. Tomorrow would mark an entire year since the attack that had done this to her, a year since a maniac had decided to blow up her neighborhood, a year since she had watched her boyfriend's crushed body get dragged out of the rubble, a year since she had triggered.  
  
Nice pushed the feelings away as best she could, wiping at her eye in frustration, she had hated everything and everyone for a long while, she didn’t have any family and friends, there was no support structure in her life after her boyfriend had died and there no way for her to pay for the hospital bills. In exchange for all of the pain and misery she had received, she found that she could suddenly make things, things she would never had dreamed of before.  
  
As long as what she decided to make had some kind of explosive component, she could do it. Nice made hundreds of crazy variations, with thousands of different effects, she had turned to crime to pay her bills, she made a bunch of small explosives, shaped them like birds, and named herself Swallow. But there was still no color in her life, nothing that made it worth a damn thing, and she had fallen into a depression, without a chance in the world of pulling herself out. It had gotten so bad that she had attempted to kill herself to escape the hell that had become her life. Which is when she met Chané Laforet and Graham Spectre, they saved her, pulled her out from her apathy, they gave her a purpose. Nice was now one of them, the three of them a team.  
  
They were Chorus.

* * *

Monday, 21st, April, 12:03 AM.  
  
Hannah slowly made her way over to the two boys, her mind was racing to figure out why he was here, and the moment Chris noticed her approach his entire face went a pale white.  
  
"Miss Militia," Chris said in horror. "What are you doing here?"  
  
Hannah almost sighed at the words already dismissing him as the potential threat, so she switched her attention to the unknown boy that Battery was currently looming over. The blonde boy didn't look fazed by the attention at all, he just calmly looked between them both before turning back to Chris and speaking up before Hannah could think of what to say.  
  
"Don't worry about it, man." The unknown boy said evenly, "You have a ticket, remember?"  
  
Hannah blinked at the news she knew firsthand just how much money the Wards received and there was absolutely no way in hell that Chris could have bought his own ticket.  
  
"Oh yeah," Chris said surprised, before recovering his composure in record time. "What’s up M.M? You look lovely in a dress."  
  
Chris said it with a cheeky smile on his face and Hannah had to stop herself from smacking him over the back of the head. Chris turned to face Battery, no doubt to make another comment on her attire but when she took a step towards him aggressively he leaned right back into his seat as far as he could go, before shutting his mouth with a clack.  
  
"Hey, Battery." Chris stuttered nervously.  
  
Battery let an amused huff of air as he cowered.  
  
"What are you doing here?" Hannah said firmly, finally managing to interject. "You were told to stay away from this investigation."  
  
Dean's eyes glanced over to her and he raised a single eyebrow.  
  
"If I didn't know any better," Dean said curiously, "I would almost think that Chris was one of the Wards."  
  
Hannah had a moment of incomprehension before her eyes snapped back over to Chris, had she misread the situation entirely and just unmasked him by accident? A dawning horror grew in her stomach at what she had just done.  
  
"Dude stop," Chris snickered at her reaction, "He already knows who I am, you didn't reveal me."  
  
Hannah breathed out of her nose noisily for a moment and she had to take a moment to squash the surge of annoyance that cut through her at the trick, she noted that Dean was now smiling.  
  
"I'll ask again," Hannah said seriously, "Why are you here?"  
  
"Dean bought me a ticket," Chris said simply. "He is meeting up with his brother and I came to support him."  
  
Chris looked over to Dean to make sure he wasn't stepping over a line by telling her their reason, but his friend just nodded, unbothered. This 'Dean' had simply bought him a ticket for the Flying Pussyfoot? And another one for himself evidently, just exactly who was this boy, who had such absurd access to money? A trip just to meet his brother, what a ridiculous mismanagement of money, it almost physically pained her.  
  
"What's your last name?" Battery asked curiously.  
  
"Stansfield," Dean said easily.  
  
Oh, Hannah thought in understanding, that explains it.  
  
"Oh." Battery said in understanding, "That explains it."  
  
Hannah blinked at the glitch in the matrix.  
  
"Why are _you_ here?" Dean asked evenly, directing his attention at Battery. "Is the Rail Tracer going to eat us or something?"  
  
Hannah noted that he didn’t sound terribly upset by the idea, in fact, the boy seemed to have a rather flat emotional response to the things around him in general if she was reading him correctly.  
  
"We are here to make sure that doesn't happen." Battery said calmly, not giving up any details to what was essentially a civilian.  
  
Chris abruptly leaned over the table to whisper something into Dean's ear, and Hannah watched the exchange with narrowed eyes. Dean leaned back in his chair after a moment before nodding hesitantly.  
  
Chris turned towards them both and gestured towards himself, both of them leaned down to hear what he to say and Hannah made sure to be on high alert for any sign of an attack. None was forthcoming but she immediately noted that it took Chris a few moments before he managed to drag his gaze back her face. Hannah raised an eyebrow at him, and Chris coughed into his hand embarrassedly, his cheeks now red.  
  
"Dean's going to join the Wards," Chris said quietly, no longer meeting her eyes. "As soon as I can ask the director about it, anyway."  
  
He was a parahuman? Hannah felt a terrible feeling rising in her chest at the news as everything seemed to fall into place, an unknown parahuman on the train, where an unknown parahuman was supposed to be trying to kill someone. A parahuman with an unknown power, Hannah felt her adrenaline spike in anticipation that they had somehow managed to accidentally stumble upon the killer. Hannah glanced over at Battery; their eyes met in understanding.  
  
"I am _not_ the Rail Tracer," Dean said abruptly, sounding annoyed, he could feel the disgust, horror, and anger directed towards him. "Jesus Christ."  
  
Hannah had a chill run down her spine at his sudden response, how had he known?  
  
"What?" Chris said in alarm, "They were thinking that?"  
  
Dean simply nodded to his friend, giving no further explanation.  
  
Hannah stared at the boy in horror for a moment, he could read minds. Battery suddenly stepped even closer to the table and towered over him.  
  
"What are your powers?" Battery demanded.  
  
"He isn’t the killer-" Chris began angrily.  
  
"I don't have to tell y-" Dean started, at the same time.  
  
Which is when the doors on the other side of the carriage were suddenly slammed open and people began running into their carriage. The passengers shouted and clawed their way past each other on the way past them towards the next carriage.

* * *

Monday, 21st, April, 12:05 AM.  
  
When the screaming started Urchin knew that someone, somewhere was laughing at him.


	13. Chapter 13

21st, Monday, 12:05 AM.  
  
Dune stepped into the carriage at the front of the train, feeling excited, he wasn't sure he could do it _exactly_ like he was supposed to, he was just having _far_ too much fun, he was starting to think that we wouldn’t be able to help himself.  
  
The door opened on his left before an old man in a conductor's uniform stepped out of the bathroom and then died. Dune lowered his gun to the ground and tried to stifle his laughter, he had done it now, Swallow was going to be _so_ upset, but if she was going to be mad _anyway_ he might as well enjoy himself, right?  
  
Dune stepped over the man’s body and headed towards the conductor's cabin; it was already unlocked so he let himself in. There was another much younger man standing near an open door that led to a little balcony, a waist high safety fence stopped him from falling out onto the tracks. The man’s clothes were being tossed about in the wind, the air in the cabin was being sucked out the room into the dark and Dune could barely hear himself think, he let out another giggle.  
  
The man turned around immediately somehow hearing the noise over the rushing wind and studied him curiously for a moment, he was wearing a staff uniform, not the same as the conductors uniform that Dune was wearing, he must have been an assistant.  
  
"Who are you?" The assistant asked him curiously, but loud enough to be heard over the wind. "Why are you wearing a conductors uniform? I've met both conductors and you are neither."  
  
Dune giggled again he was barely holding on, it was just so funny, the assistant had a name tag pinned to his chest, 'Felix' was written across the tag in neat black letters.  
  
"I killed the conductor and stole his uniform," Dune said mirthfully. "I got the other one in the hall _too_! We’re taking over the train, sorry!"  
  
Dune didn't sound sorry at all, and he certainly wasn’t feeling it.  
  
"What was the first conductor's name?" Felix asked flatly, and without inflection.  
  
"His name was Tony!" Dune laughed loudly, unable to hold back anymore. "Did you know him?"  
  
"He was my mentor," Felix said evenly.  
  
Dune laughed, and laughed and laughed and laughed, he was still laughing when Felix ground his arm into the train tracks, leaving nothing but a bloody stump behind, Dune only stopped laughing when he no longer had a face to laugh with.

* * *

21st, Monday, 12:05 AM.  
  
Climax kicked the carriage door open and it slammed into the wall with a loud bang, the door immediately sprung back towards him, but he had already stepped into the room, he took a moment to push it away again before he stepped further inside. There were people talking, drinking, and eating along the tables that lined the walls of the carriage, most of which were now staring at him in alarm.  
  
"Hello!" Climax yelled happily, lifting his massive wrench up and smashing it through the side of the train, showering everyone in the carriage with debris.  
  
"This is now a hostage situation," Swallow said calmly, stepping up beside him, with a large bag held out in front of her. "Please place all of your jewellery, valuables, and money into the bag."  
  
People were already running away from them towards the next carriage and Swallow sighed in annoyance. Aural stepped past her and kicked the leg out from under a man that had tried to grab a hold of her. Aural twisted his arm over his shoulder and then smashed him face first into the floor, he didn't move knocked unconscious from the move.  
  
"Thanks," Swallow said quietly, before raising her voice once more, "Like I was saying, please remain calm, hand over your valuables, and everybody will remain unhurt."  
  
Some of the people that were closest to them started to hand her things after that, but most them just ran away.

* * *

I peeked through the window of the carriage door in front of me, there were a lot of people currently in the carriage, most notably I could see Dean and Chris sitting down at a table. Two smoking hotties that were wearing rather short dresses were chatting them up, the two guys must have had some surprisingly good game to pull that one off, I was impressed.  
  
The door at the opposite end of the carriage opened and people starting running down the carriage towards my door, screaming. I watched as they stumbled into each other in their rush to get away from something. I had to move to the left as people opened the door and clawed their way past me, all panic and flailing limbs. Once they were gone I stepped back up to the door and tried to see what they had been running from.  
  
I could see a tall blonde guy in blue overalls right at the other end of the next carriage, strangely enough the guy was holding a giant wrench against his shoulder, almost as tall as he was. To the right of him stood a blonde chick with an eye-patch, a single ribbon tied around her neck, she wore a red sleeveless shirt and a pair of jeans. On the man’s left, the last woman stood casually, she had long dark hair and wore a black dress that was doing wonderful things to her body, there was a matching black rose made of lace, stitched onto one of the straps of her dress. None of them wore a mask, they were just standing there calmly holding out a bag while the rest of the carriage went ape shit, the people closest to them started dumping things into the bags.  
  
They were robbing the train, nice.  
  
I knew who these three were from my recent cape research, but I hadn't ever seen them in the flesh before today, their names were, from left to right Aural, Climax, and then Swallow, but they weren't always in that order, heh. These three were villains, the leading members of the gang called Chorus, they had been around for a couple of years now, although Swallow was a fairly recent addition to the team. None of them had ever bothered to hide their identities and as far as I knew they worked out of a hideout somewhere in the city, not that anybody had managed to locate it.  
  
The two women that were standing next to Dean had turned to face the door and I realized, from the reflection in the window, that they were both wearing masks with a large 'P' on the front. Members of the Protectorate, Battery, and Miss Militia, most likely, two of the three female members of the Protectorate that were in Brockton bay. Nobody had ever seen Dragon out of a suit, so she probably wasn't present, although, it _was_ possible that either of these two were from out of town. Could there be more members of the Protectorate here, in different carriages? Was Armsmaster lurking, just out of sight in a little black dress, ready to shove his halberd up my ass?  
  
Dean and Chris had dragged started dragging out two suitcases from underneath the table already changing clothes, they were both clearly prepared for a fight, or at least prepared to _prepare_ for a fight as it happens. Chris started pulling out pieces of red armor, and I watched as he dropped a pair of matching red pistols onto the table while he started strapping them on.  
  
Well, there was my confirmation, Chris was Kid Win.  
  
There was no way that the members of Chorus were the Rail Tracer, I had already considered every gang in the city already when I was investigating, and not a single one of them fit at all. Chorus had three capes and a handful of normies in their gang, they maimed and beat people, but they had never killed a person, tending to stick to robberies or ransoms.  
  
I couldn’t help but think that this damn train was getting awfully crowded with capes, Dean was apparently friends with Kid Win and I had my doubts that Kid Win would willingly befriend a killer. So either Dean _wasn't_ the Rail Tracer, or he _was_ , having mastered Kid Win or something. I was suddenly feeling like it that he wasn't the killer though, why was he on the train at all then? None of these damn people should be on the train except Dean, this was bullshit, it didn't make any sense.  
  
The door behind Chorus opened slowly and a man almost completely covered in blood stepped through the door, he was too far away for me to be able to make out his face from under all of the blood. He was dragging a body with him, it was missing an arm up to the shoulder and it's face was completely gone, just a gory mess of blood and bone. He tossed it clear down the carriage and the members of Chorus jumped out of the way as it passed. The guy clearly had super strength, I noted, as the body hit the ground and then slid to a stop in the middle of the carriage.  
  
Who the hell was this asshole?  
  
The man had auburn hair and was wearing what used to be a white uniform, was he a member of the train staff? I could have sworn that I had seen him somewhere before, but I couldn't place the guy.  
  
Fuck it, the guy was giving off obvious serial killer vibes, I had found my target.  
  
I opened the door loudly and then walked casually into the carriage, all of the heroes turned around and looked at me in shock, but I just waved as I approached.  
  
"Dibs on the Rail Tracer," I said cheerfully, as I strode up the aisle towards them. “My next paycheck is on the line here."  
  
Miss Militia had a gun pointed at me the second I had stepped into the carriage, and I did my best to ignore it. The heroes all stepped back towards the walls of the train as I approached, unhurriedly, having affected a facade of indifference. On the inside, I was terrified that Miss Militia was about to pop a cap in my ass.  
  
I stopped about a meter away from the group.  
  
"Urchin." Miss Militia said calmly.  
  
I hadn't seen her since Gaston had died, I did my best to push down the feeling that surged up as I was reminded of that night. It wasn't the time, I thought, I had a job to do, I swallowed down the misery and forced a grin onto my face.  
  
"Nice dress," I said shamelessly, wagging my eyebrows at her. "I'm waggling my eyebrows at you so hard right now," I added after a moment after I realized that nobody could see my face, fucking mask.  
  
Battery scoffed at the comment as she stood perfectly still, probably charging up her power as much as possible in case I attacked, she could probably put me straight through the carriage wall in an instant if she wanted to, yikes. Violence suddenly broke out in the other carriage as Climax swung his massive wrench at the guy that was covered in blood and the massive metal tool tore a ragged line through the wall of the train all the way to the ceiling. Holy shit, Climax was strong. I was close enough now to make out the guy's facial features a little bit better now. It was the guy from yesterday that had been at the train station. Felix, I could see his name tag now.  
  
Felix stepped under another swing of the giant wrench seemingly unbothered, as he had a pleasant smile on his face. The wrench smashed through a window before it carried on through the metal wall into another one, sending metal and glass fragments all over the place.  
  
Aural was flitting around Climax's attacks at an absurd speed, trying her best to either hamstring or hinder Felix with her small but sharp knife, but nothing was connecting, she stepped underneath Climax's next swing from within the danger zone, seemingly perfectly at ease being in the middle of such frantic combat, she swiped at Felix's eyes but he reached out and gently brushed her hand aside with the back of his hand.  
  
Felix continued his unstoppable advance towards Swallow, who was desperately retreating from the fighting, she couldn't use her bombs in such close confines without hitting her teammates in the crossfire. All the while Felix was advancing on her, the obvious weak link in melee combat, they were all getting desperate.  
  
If they lost any more ground to him they would practically be in our carriage, but Miss Militia still hadn't said anything. Chorus wasn't the problem here dammit, and neither was I, we needed to stop the killer. We were wasting time, and there were people still trapped in the other carriage.  
  
"Look, that dude is obviously the Rail Tracer," I said confidently, using the absolutely terrible name. "What do you say about a temporary truce to kick his ass?"  
  
They were all remained silent, Dean and Kid Win had finished changing during the standoff. Dean was now wearing a simple black bodysuit, black combat boots, and a motorbike helmet. All the money in the world and his costume was the equivalent of a flat white with two sugars, I managed to hold back from calling him a basic bitch, barely.  
  
Battery had her body angled towards me, but she was focusing on the fight in the next carriage. Kid Win had his laser pistols pointed to the ground, frequently looking back and forth between me and the fight. Miss Militia was just staring straight at me, silently. Fuck it, I wasn't going to wait until someone else got killed.  
  
I cleared my throat loudly.  
  
"I'm going to go get Aural and then Climax," I said easily, pointing to both villains in turn, before turning to point at Battery, "Are you going to Swallow?"  
  
"Dude!" Kid Win yelped in alarm.  
  
Dean looked impressed at my audacity, while Battery looked incredibly pissed off at the comment but had managed to somehow hold onto her silence. Miss Militia let out a sigh before jerking her head towards the other carriage. I immediately stepped between the heroes and thanked whatever deity was looking over me that they didn't immediately mob me, I would still have to be careful, she never actually agreed to that truce.  
  
The carriage they were fighting in was absolutely destroyed, Climax had lost any semblance of restraint and was now just swinging madly at Felix, but nothing seemed to even come close to touching him, the guy was a ghost as he evaded every single attempt to cause him harm. He must have had some sort of precognition or something, and the way he was moving was incredibly strange, he was clearly _moving_ fast but everything he did had a slow languid look to it. Felix looked up suddenly, meeting my eye, and gave me a smile.  
  
Well, that was terrifying.  
  
I gave the battlefield another quick once over before I stepped over the threshold and into the carriage, there were civilians cowering among the rubble on the floor with their hands over their heads, while the sound of wind tearing through the moving train was overwhelming. I would have to be careful about the types of attacks I used in such close quarters, only blunted wires and swipes, no piercing attacks, I didn't want to kill anyone by accident. I watched them all fight for a moment to get a handle on the rhythm and did my best to identify an opportunity to attack that wouldn't get any of the members of Chorus killed.  
  
Swallow was still crawling towards me through the rubble, on her hands and knees an expression of terror on her face. Aural was trying to pressure Felix enough to take his focus off the others, she barely managed to deflect a knife-hand from Felix that would have connected with Climax's throat. Aural’s knife was knocked free of her hand by his counter and she spun underneath the return swing of Climax's wrench and plucked the knife back out of the air with her other hand just in time to lash out again, hitting nothing but air.  
  
Climax's massive swing traveled from the roof of the train to the ground at an angle, Felix stepped onto the end of the wrench and then off again halfway through the swing, he made it look effortless. The maneuver had placed him in between them and Swallow again as he stepped backward towards Swallow, they desperately tried to delay his advance, but it was like fighting the wind.  
  
I wouldn’t find myself with a better chance to enter the fight, so I created a massive arm construct out of wires, at least as tall as I was, and sent the palm of my creation flashing through the air above Swallow’s head to come at Felix from the side. Just as the giant hand was about to connect and slap him out of the train, he did something incredible. Without even turning around Felix casually lifted a hand and placed it onto the top of the construct before he lifted himself off the ground with a little spin. For a single beat, he was completely vertical in a single-handed handstand, his feet just brushing the ceiling before the hand passed beneath him to smash through the wall of the train. Felix twisted gracefully in the air and placed his foot onto Climax's wrench before stepping back down to the floor of the carriage, with a kind of unhurried grace that sent chills down my spine, he moved closer to Swallow completely unhindered.  
  
I stared at him in shock  
  
What the fuck was that? It was a god damned sneak attack, from a blind spot, with a suddenness that no-one else on the train could have possibly been able to react to and he had just wandered on through it as if he were having a nice stroll in the park. I sent out two more hands an instant later, lashing out with straight rapid jabs, neither of the constructs came close to touching him. Aural had instantly acclimated to my addition to the fight and had started to use my attacks to insert more precisely targeted knife strikes of her own. Climax just keep breaking everything in sight like it was made of paper. How exactly was Felix doing this? The guy was fighting as if he could see in every direction at once, somehow see everything and then move through it like it was a walk in the park.  
  
I glanced over my shoulder at the heroes, they hadn't moved much, except for Battery who had angled herself back towards the fight, and by extension me, which made me slightly uncomfortable. Miss Militia was standing with her gun pointed down at the floor, she couldn't attack in this direction without risking the civilians hiding on the floor, and it was a bad idea to get between two enemies when they were beating the shit out of each other anyway. Kid Win was similarly hamstrung, he had immediately fallen under Miss Militia's command when the cape stuff had broken out and she was clearly keeping him on a tight leash. Dean was staring with a strange intensity straight past me, watching the fight but not getting involved.  
  
I turned back to the fight and abruptly switched tactics, I sent wires out to wrap around all of the civilians that were between Felix and my side of the carriage, before dragging them all out of the holes in the side of the train that Climax had made. I generated more wires behind me and used them to smash two holes in the carriage wall directly behind me on either side. I moved the civilians that I held outside the train back in through the hole and put them behind me near the heroes, belatedly realized that they were all screaming in terror, whoops. The heroes quickly started moving the civilians back out through the other side of the carriage and out of immediate danger.  
  
I began creating a massive mesh of wires between Felix and Swallow, cutting her off from the fight. Swallow took advantage of the space to grab my leg before pulling herself up to her feet, gasping for breath and looking around with wild eyes. Aural, Climax, and Felix all continued fighting on the other side of the wall.  
  
"Thanks." Swallow gasped out, as she took in all the heroes behind me for a moment before turning back to the wall of wires. "I can't leave them in there."  
  
Climax suddenly came slamming through the wall of wires like it wasn't even there, I barely managed to push Swallow to the side of the carriage but Climax ended up clipping me on his flight past, spinning me into the wall while the heroes had to dive out of his way. His limp body smashed through a bunch of tables and came to a stop sprawled on the broken remains of a chair, unconscious.  
  
Holy shit.  
  
Swallow was wildly swinging her arms trying to regain her balance as she slowly tipped out of the open hole in the side of the train and I barely managed to grab her in time. I looked through the hole in the wires just in time to see Aural dive back through the gap and out of range of Felix’s grasping hand. Aural tumbled through into a roll and then came up out of it to stand next to me calmly, she met my eyes and nodded, allies for now.  
  
Felix, still on the other side of the wire wall was laughing happily, like he was having the time of his life, I covered the holes on the sides of the train as best I could, and his voice laughter became much easier to hear as a result. He didn't have a single mark on him from the fight, hell he wasn't even out of breath, he was, however, still completely covered in blood.  
  
"Well, that was fun!" Felix said amused before he lazily reached down to a mostly destroyed table by the door and flipped it over.  
  
A blonde woman lay there in a white dress, I had missed someone. The woman would have been stunningly beautiful in any other circumstance, but now she was covered in debris and her hair had come mostly loose from its elaborate braid. The dress that had probably cost more money than I had seen in my entire life had been completely ruined by a slowly spreading red stain at her shoulder, where the blood from a cut on her temple had run down her neck to meet with the white material. The woman looked around vaguely, seemingly not very present, she was probably concussed.  
  
Felix pulled her to her feet silently and I felt a chill spread down my spine as I tensed, she was too far away for me to do anything before he reacted. So I silently watched and waited for him to ruthlessly murder her, but instead, Felix simply sent her on her way back down the carriage with a pleasant smile. Everybody in the carriages was silent as the woman left, she took two steps towards the end of the train and then fell towards one of the many open holes in the wall. I had wires tearing out of the carriage headed towards her in an instant, but I wasn't needed. Felix grabbed her hand and pulled her back, and she managed to steady herself after a moment before continuing down the hall away from us all, the door to the carriage opened as she approached it and closed behind her as she left.  
  
I couldn't understand what I had just witnessed, and Felix turned back to us with a grin, his perfectly white teeth stood out in stark contrast to all of the blood on his face. Felix pointed to the roof of the train before he jumped towards a hole that Climax had made, he grabbed the edge of the torn roof and then flipped himself upwards and onto the roof of the train, out of sight.  
  
Fuck, we had to go after him, he could just wander along the roof of the train, bypassing us and then start killing people on the other side. I turned around carefully brushing passed Aural to find Miss Militia and Battery talking in low tones. Swallow was already making her way to Climax, and the heroes tensed as she approached but let her pass unharmed before they closed ranks behind her. Aural stood calmly next to me, not saying a word, but not attacking anyone either.  
  
"Alright!" I said confidently, and nearly everybody turned to me. "So that was the Rail Tracer."  
  
Swallow had managed to get Climax into a sitting position and was trying to wake him up, to no avail  
  
"He's probably going to kill more people," I said easily, pointing to the roof. "So I'm going to go up there and do my best to kick his ass."  
  
I clapped my hands together once before spreading my arms out wide.  
  
"Who's coming with me?" I asked cheerfully, resulting in a flurry of activity in the carriage, as everybody started talking quickly and quietly to each other.  
  
Aural tapped me on the shoulder, and when I turned to look at her she pointed at me, then at herself before smiling prettily. I studied her curiously for a moment, either she wanted to duck away for a quickie, or we were teaming up, hopefully, it was both.  
  
"Awesome," I said happily, "Any other takers?"  
  
Miss Militia and Battery were still arguing in low voices before Battery put up a hand in surrender, then she moved towards us. Fuck yeah, we had this in the bag the three of us were definitely the dream team, it’s a shame that Climax was currently out of it, as that was the next best addition for taking Felix on.  
  
Battery stopped next to us silently and crossed her arms.  
  
"Battery will go with you," Miss Militia said unnecessarily before Dean suddenly stepped forward.  
  
"I'm going too," Dean said quietly, suddenly moving towards us.  
  
Battery immediately tried to shut down that idea, apparently not at all happy with bringing an unknown cape along.  
  
"Sit down, you aren't going anywhere." Battery said harshly. "You aren't trained for this."  
  
Dean wasn't evenly looking at her though, he was looking at me, and just when Battery looked like she was going to press the issue, he spoke up.  
  
"The guy that everyone just fought," Dean said intensely. "His name is Claire Stansfield, he's my older brother."  
  
"I fucking knew it!" I shouted immediately, unable to believe it. "I _knew_ it was one of the Stansfield's, I did think it was you for a while though, I’m not going to lie."  
  
Dean was looking at me strangely, probably impressed with my incredible deductive skills, I almost had it, I was only off by a deviation of exactly one brother. Dean shouldered his way through the group and over to me. Battery looked stressed but made no further move to dissuade him, It looks like he was coming with us then.  
  
"Let's do this," I said, grinning. "Temporary Full Frontals, fall in line."  
  
Batteries eyebrows narrowed together, and Dean was mouthing 'Full Frontals?' under his breath, Aural just shook her head with a smile.


	14. Chapter 14

21st, Monday, 12:27 AM.  
  
When we climbed onto the roof, Claire Stansfield was waiting for us. I thought we would have had to search the roof and then carriages to find him, but he was just standing right in the middle of the train, his back was towards us and he held his arms outstretched, seemingly enjoying the wind as it rushed by, the perfect opportunity for a sneak attack.  
  
"Claire!" Dean yelled suddenly as he stepped in front of us, and Claire turned around at the sound of his name, smiling.  
  
God dammit, Dean.  
  
"It's been a while little brother!" Claire called back, the wind doing its best to take away his voice.  
  
I looked at Dean to see his reaction, and he had a strange look on his face, somehow managing to look somehow, happy, sad, and angry all at the same time. I watched as he started to say something before hesitating, he tried again a moment later, clearly struggling to find the right words.  
  
"Why are you doing this?!" Dean yelled back finally, frustrated.  
  
Claire just shook his head in gently, the smile on his face seemingly genuine.  
  
"You'll have to be a bit more specific, Dean!" Felix said amused, almost sounding like he was about to start laughing.  
  
"You killed all those people!" Dean shot back immediately. "You're the Rail Tracer!"  
  
"Is that what they're calling me?" Claire said more quietly, sounding bemused.  
  
Dean made an angry noise at the non-answer, but Claire just shook his head again, still smiling.  
  
"Claire!" Dean said sounding anguished, "You can't keep doing this!"  
  
Claire just watched him curiously, waiting for him to continue.  
  
"You're sick!" Dean tried again, "Just come with me and we can find you help!"  
  
Claire tilted his head, and something changed in him at the words, his smile was still present but now it didn't reach his eyes.  
  
"I don’t need help, Dean!" Claire called back.  
  
Claire wiped his fingers up into his hair, sweeping the tangled web of hair and blood out of his face, the motion caused him to leave faint smear of blood across his brow in the process.  
  
"I don't need help Dean, why would I?" Claire said once more, and his eyes were filled with a strange intensity as he stared at his brother. "Nothing here is real, it's just an image my mind has projected onto the world, everything is just a dream."  
  
I didn't understand what he meant, I glanced back at Dean wondering if this was some sort of brotherly meme, but he was looking at Claire with incomprehension. What was he saying exactly? That we weren't real? That none of us were actually on this train? or that the train didn't exist?  
  
"This world is just a long, long dream I'm having." Claire continued sounding once again amused, but there was a strange undertone to what he was saying. "Each and every one of you is just an illusion, you don't really exist."  
  
Claire Stansfield really was insane, I wasn't an illusion, and this definitely wasn't a dream, the guy had somehow convinced himself that everything was fake, he was sick, just like Dean had said.  
  
"My mind dreamt up this world," Claire said with a laugh, "I sit at its centre as the only real thing in it."  
  
Claire smile widely, but this time it reached his eyes, he looked excited and alive.  
  
"So what will happen if I die?" Claire asked curiously, but nobody dared answer.  
  
I don't know what exactly, had broken him to make him like this, but I felt like I could almost understand it. Mom, Dad, Gaston, and Belle, when each of them had died I had retreated into myself, to hide away from the world, I tried to tell myself that it was just a sick dream, that I would wake up to find that they were perfectly fine. That I would walk into my kitchen and Gaston would be standing there making breakfast, unharmed and alive.  
  
I had tried to convince myself that they hadn't actually died, but the world turned cruelly on, each of them had stayed dead and gone. The illusion I had tried to build couldn't hold up to reality, so it had shattered, and my dream reached an end.  
  
Claire’s dream had never finished, whatever tragedy had brought him to this, it had left him broken. He had retreated into himself, just like I had, only he had never come back out, he had convinced himself that it was all a terrible, terrible dream, that he was the only thing that was real, to avoid the pain, he had distanced himself from reality.  
  
"I just can't imagine myself dying." Claire said honestly, "But if I did, then everyone would simply disappear!"  
  
Claire let his hand drop from his hair and then raised both of his arms out wide as if to embrace us all.  
  
"I am the only one in this world who won't disappear, the rest of you are just the images I see, as if in a dream." Claire said intently, before falling silent.  
  
Everyone was quiet and we just watched him for a while, trying to reach some kind of understanding, but Dean recovered after barely a moment.  
  
"Why did you save that woman in the carriage then?!" Dean yelled, angry and hurt. "If we're all fake, why did you save her?"  
  
"So what if I'd save her," Claire said amused. "In my mind, it's the certainty in myself that I possess which allows me to have that kind of mercy or compassion."  
  
It took me a moment to unpack that one, what was he saying exactly? That he would let people live occasionally because he was self-assured? self-confident? Strong? I couldn't make the connection; this kind of philosophical stuff went over my head.  
  
"So remember this, little brother," Claire said seriously, "Mercy and compassion are virtues that only the strong are privileged to possess."  
  
"And I," Claire said darkly, as a grin slowly spread across his face. "am strong."  
  
I didn't have time to parse that because Claire had suddenly started moving towards us. Claire didn't look like he was going to stop any time soon, so I dragged Dean backward to next to me with nearby wires, and Aural immediately stepped up in front of us, her thin knife glinting in the passing lights.  
  
Oh shit, here we go again.  
  
Battery had been standing still during the entire discussion and she absolutely cratered the roof of the train as she threw herself forward at an absurd speed, appearing next to Claire in an instant before slamming her left foot into the roof to stop her momentum and then lashing out with a kick that tore through the air towards his torso. Claire leaned backward until he was completely horizontal as Battery's right leg slashed through the air just above him and his clothes were whipped around from the force, she spun in an almost complete circle before she twisted her foot slightly and then used the movement to raise her kicking leg high into the air before she brought it down without mercy towards him. This all happened in the space of a second, they were moving fast enough that the details were starting to blur together.  
  
Aural had started forward the moment Battery had attacked and had almost reached them; moving just as fast as both of them, she clearly had some form of enhanced speed as well.  
  
Claire, from his horizontal position, put his hand on the floor and then spun his legs out in a circle, Battery's left leg was swept out from under her in an instant and she started to fall to the ground. Claire reached for her face as she fell and her eyes widened, I speared a wire directly where his hand would impact her face and thickened the end of the wire in an instant, it bloomed into a pane of metal in-between them, but Claire simply aborted the attack, taking a moment to step backward as Aural's knife flashed through the air past his face, he lifted his leg to avoid a blast of light that came barrelling out of Dean's hand before ducking backward out of range.  
  
I quickly created another shield nearby in case I had to intervene once more as Aural turned into her missed attack and carried the momentum into a backhanded swipe but Claire simply reached out to push her forearm aside with his hand, with a twist of his wrist he pulled Aural gently past him before spinning across her body back towards Battery.  
  
Aural was left teetering on the edge of the train, the wind threatening to drag her off, her black dress was whipping around violently in the wind. I pushed her back from the edge with the shield before refocusing on the fight once more, Battery had managed to stand back up and was now retreating out of Claire's reach, she needed a moment to recharge her spent power, so I would oblige her.  
  
Three giant wire constructs, shaped like hands grew into existence and I sent them forth to attack with a chain of punches one after another, striking at him in a steady beat, he dodged the first few attacks before suddenly changing tactics. Claire reached out and slapped the first construct away with the back of his hand, the entire thing disintegrated from the force, it was the first time I had actually seen his super strength with my own eyes.  
  
It was terrifying.  
  
I thickened the shields in response, if he had continued his attack against Battery before, his hand would have gone straight through my shield like it was paper, the second hand attacked low and Claire stepped onto it, tensed his leg before stomping it down into the wires. The hand was destroyed beneath the massive force and his foot continued on to the roof of the train cratering it and leaving a massive hole behind, the entire length of the train shuddered from the impact. The third construct I broke into three smaller hands and kept up the rhythmic attacks, I created more shields, one for each person in case he started tossing shit around.  
  
Aural re-entered the fray, flitting around my rhythmic strikes to attack from bizarrely low angles, she was lashing and stabbing at Claire's legs, trying to disrupt his footwork. Claire seemed to barely notice her as he weaved between each attack, brushing them away like gnats and still somehow advancing towards us at the same time.  
  
I was reminded once again of just how ridiculous this guy was. I knew intellectually there were people out there that could no-sell me, people with defenses that were strong for me to penetrate, capes that could overpower me with brute strength or capes with strange powers that would mess with my head but this was an entirely different beast.  
  
I couldn't even land a single hit on the guy, he was blocking attacks from blind spots, dodging four different capes attacks simultaneously with multiple changing disruptions on the field like the wire hands. Some of our attacks were coming from strange angles, timed to give him the least amount of time to dodge and we _still_ couldn't hit him.  
  
It was infuriating.  
  
Battery suddenly appeared next to him in a blur, the roof bore the brunt of her stoppage once more and she lashed out with half a hundred punches in an instant. Claire wove through them with no extra difficulty, brushing some aside, blocking others, and avoiding the rest, until abruptly Battery's charge ran out and she immediately backed off again. I sent another hand at him to assist in her retreat and Claire scattered it with barely a moment's effort.  
  
 _Fuck._  
  
Nobody was this good, how was he doing it? He had to be at least a Brute, Mover, and Thinker all at once, super strength, super speed, enhanced reflexes, some kind of enhanced multitasking, and whatever he was doing to _see_ the attacks in the first place.  
  
Our motley assortment of capes were working pretty well together despite a lack of communication and we were all pretty strong capes individually, I felt like we shouldn't be having this much trouble.  
  
Aural alone was an absolute beast, she was a Mover/Thinker, the public information on her said her powers were echolocation, enhanced agility, speed, and timing. It led to her being an incredibly deadly melee combatant and she hadn't even managed to scuff the guy's shoes for fuck sake.  
  
Battery was a member of the Protectorate; she could move at absurd speeds after she had a moment to charge up and she hit with the force of a truck. I could barely track her top speeds, although the distance was helping me see the movements more clearly, she felt barely present in the fight, she would duck in after she charged up, get stonewalled by the guy's untouchable nature, and then have to retreat again.  
  
Dean was essentially a non-factor, his blasts were slow in comparison to everyone else we were sending Claire’s way, and he probably wouldn't have been able to hit his brother if he were half-blind and dying of tuberculosis. He _was_ providing good covering fire, and the beams were just another thing that he had to avoid.  
  
Claire Stansfield was simply a monster, he was as far above us, as we were from the normies. He saw everything coming but nothing slowed him down, he was fighting a team of capes that would destroy any single non-invulnerable cape that I could think of, and he wasn't even pretending to try.  
  
I felt personally attacked.  
  
I knew he wasn't trying, because he was barely attacking us back seemingly content to defend and deflect our attacks while slowly moving around, occasionally pretending to advance on us. I'd seen hints of an obscene speed granted by some of his reactions, but he wasn't blitzing us, he was just letting the fight play out, like a treat rarely indulged in.  
  
One of Dean's attacks hit the ground near Claire’s foot, marring the metal surface and drawing my attention for a moment.  
  
"What do your range attacks do?!" I yelled at him.  
  
They had to do something more than slight physical damage, Dean made sure to keep up his attempts to hinder his brother's movements while responding to my question.  
  
"When they hit someone," Dean yelled back. "I can make them feel an emotion! Like sadness or whatever!"  
  
What?  
  
"What the fuck?" I yelled in disbelief, what a dumb power.  
  
Dean glanced at me in confusion for a moment, the swearing drawing his attention.  
  
"Try not to cry, Claire!" I taunted loudly.  
  
Claire managed to look at me questioningly while fending off all of our combined attacks at the same time.  
  
"Dean is going to hit you with his sissy-bitch beams!" I yelled at the top of my lungs.  
  
Dean immediately looked pissed off at the comment, but Claire simply laughed.  
  
Battery appeared again fist extended towards his face, but he simply leaned back to avoid it before reaching out past Battery's arm and clamped his hand down onto her shoulder, he made the absurdly fast motion look almost casual. Battery jerked to a stop like she was smashing into a brick wall and her shoulder dislocated with a massive crack that I could hear from here, she tried desperately to pry his hand off her with a strangled scream of pain.  
  
Claire stepped on her leg in response and I watched with horror as her kneecap snapped inwards. Aural immediately started an incredible chain of flickering stabs at Claire's eyes that drew his attention away from Battery for a moment, I sent wires tearing through the air and chased him even further away. I jammed as many shields in between him and Battery as I could as I did my best to herd him towards the edge of the train. Claire made a series of short calculated hops and turns to avoid it all before he started to circle back around to make his way towards me.  
  
Fuck this.  
  
I threw myself off the train to avoid him and dragged myself around in a wide semi-circle, a stream of wires left in my wake, they abruptly surged upwards like a wave, increasing in volume a thousand-fold as they crashed towards Claire. For the first time in the fight he stopped advancing, he dodged backward past the others in an attempt to get away from the massive wave and when the wave reached Battery and Aural it opened around them before continuing past without touching them. I added another wave to the roof beside it, combining the two to encompass the entire width of the train and Claire fled backward away from it, with nowhere to run. I chased him back three carriages at least before the wave obstructed my vision of him briefly, the wave swept down the length of the train and surged off the end of the train before I allowed it to vanish, but he was gone.  
  
Had he jumped from the train? My eyes snapped to check on Battery, but she was fine, well, fine was really a good descriptor giving that she was lying on her back and screaming in pain, but she wasn’t currently under attack at least, besides Aural was standing next to her, still on guard. I sent some wires down towards them wrapping them around Battery tightly before I picked her up as gently as I could manage. I sent her back down to where Miss Militia and Kid Win were still in the carriage below us, I lowered her through the hole in the wall and left her there, she was out of the fight.  
  
I landed next to Aural with a stumble and Dean jogged towards us from the other carriage, I opened my mouth to tell them both to stay on guard when Claire crested the side of the train opposite us at great speed and clamped his hand down on his brother's shoulder, my mind reeled at the suddenness, and we all froze in horror.  
  
Claire just smiled.  
  


* * *

"Claire," Dean grunted out, trying for a moment to pull free of his grip, but quickly gave up when he didn't budge.  
  
I couldn't speak, my mind was too busy trying to figure out how to save him before his brother tore him in half, Dean looked up at his brother after a moment before he spoke.  
  
"What happened to mom?" Dean asked quietly, we were close enough now that he didn't have to yell to be heard.  
  
I didn't know what to do, he could kill Dean before I moved any of the shields, hands or wires I had created, I glanced at Aural who was standing tensed directly beside me, leaning forward and ready to move in an instant, but she hadn't because she wasn't fast enough either.  
  
 _Fuck._  
  
"Ah," Claire said surprised. "I thought you might have forgotten in all of the excitement."  
  
Claire looked more sane then he had appeared the entire night, his previous lack of lucidity had peeled back slightly to reveal the remnant of a human being underneath, he looked up at the sky for a moment and then spoke as if he was reading from a script.  
  
"Sarah Stansfield. April 12th, 1996. Attempts to kill her ten-year-old son." Claire said evenly, "Sarah is convinced that her eldest son is an impostor."  
  
Dean stared at his brother with wide eyes and had stopped trying to escape entirely. I was trying to figure out exactly what that meant, she thought that her own son was an impostor? A fake child? Someone _pretending_ to be a child?  
  
"Sarah insists that the boy has done something to her real son." Claire continues, "The son manages to escape before she can kill him, but he is gravely injured in the process."  
  
Dean's expression is turning more and more to horror as the story unfolds, Claire could see his brother's reaction and was studying him curiously. I felt a sense of rising dread crawling up my chest, Dean must have felt it because his eyes snapped towards me before turning back to his brother.  
  
"Sarah is committed to a mental asylum in perpetuity," Claire says clearly, but without feeling. "She tries to kill herself soon after."  
  
"Stop," Dean said forcefully, as he started to cry. "I've changed my mind, I don't want to know, anymore."  
  
"Medical staff manage to get to her in time." Claire continues mercilessly. "She falls into a coma soon after, that she will never wake from."  
  
Dean doesn't respond, he just wipes at his face angrily with the back of his hand.  
  
"It was good to see you again, Dean," Claire says genuinely before he shoves his brother off the train.  
  
I've been on a hair-trigger the entire time waiting for the moment to act, but instead of ripping him in two, he threw him off the train. I managed to catch him in time about halfway to the tracks and quickly toss him back into the train with Battery.  
  
Claire turned to fully face us both, he hadn't killed his brother on purpose, he knew that I would be able to get to him in time, was there a last shred of humanity left in him after all?  
  
"You're really good," Claire said happily, to Aural. "What's your name?"  
  
Ouch, what about me asshole? That kinda stung. Aural tapped her throat with her index finger and shook her head once.  
  
"Oh!" Claire said with genuine surprise. "I hadn't realized, my apologies." Aural glanced at me, she had very expressive eyes.  
  
Yeah yeah, I get it.  
  
"Her name is Aural, spelled with an Au," I say to him while waggling my eyebrows behind my stupid mask. "Or an O if she likes you."  
  
I elbow her in the side jokingly and Claire laughs out loud at the stupid joke; it figures that only serial killer's and psychopaths find my jokes funny. Aural turns her head to look at me, a single eyebrow raised.

I shrug, and she quickly presses her tongue into her cheek three times. I grin at her, with names like Aural, Climax, and Swallow they obviously had a sense of humor, I'm glad she didn't shank me.  
  
"Well, I believe we were in the middle of something?" Claire asks leadingly and takes a casual step forward.  
  
Aural met my eyes for a moment and then started walking forward, looks like I'm the support, she pours on the speed and half-circles him before coming in from the side. Claire's eyes follow her the entire time, but he doesn't bother turning, I start bringing my existing shields and hands into range, ready to use them as distractions and defenses for Aural. After a second of thought, I generate another ten hands and shields each.  
  
Aural takes three swipes at Claire’s legs before suddenly drawing a second knife from under her dress and slashing straight upwards, the knife glints as it ascends. Claire pulls his legs back from the swipes and then taps her wrist gently with the back of his hand, she drops the knife.  
  
Claire plucks it out of the air in the same motion, before driving it down at her face without mercy, her eyes widen in shock. I barely manage to move the closest wires into place between his arm and her head, he tears straight through five of them before I can thicken them enough to halt his strike, he doesn't even glance at me as I attempt to tangle his arm.  
  
Aural tries to nick his wrist with her second knife but he pulls it back tearing free of the wires with brute force, she switches targets to his toes, ducking low under my wires and driving a knife straight at his foot. Claire moves it to the side at the last moment and the knife glances off the roof with a shower of sparks that vanish into the wind.  
  
Claire takes a swipe at her with his stolen knife and she dances back of reach, but this time he follows her, keeping up a steady stream of precise slashes and thrusts. Fast, but not blindingly so, he was just testing her, and she somehow managed to evade, deflect or block each strike in the chain. I was trying to trip him up the entire time, striking at his face with the hands but he would just slap them away in between each strike, disintegrating them through sheer force.  
  
It was maddening.  
  
Whether I attacked when he was attacking Aural or not he would still manage to deflect the attacks, and I noticed that the fight was slowly moving back towards me. I started to move some shields back into position in case he rushed me, when Claire suddenly grabbed one of my wires out the air and yanked on it, I was sent flying forward before I could even react.  
  
Oh fuck.  
  
I threw my hands up between us and tried to yank myself backward at the same time, but he still managed to kick me, right in the middle of my crossed arms. The wire amour covering my arms disintegrated in an instant and I felt both of my arms break from the force, followed by something in my chest a moment later, my crossed arms smashed back into my face and I blacked out for a moment.  
  
I came too in a massive dent, half-buried in the roof of the train, the roof was torn in places around me and I could see into the carriage below me. People were standing in the cabin and staring up at me, further down the carriage.  
  
Claire was standing a couple of meters away from me, holding Aural by the back of her neck and her feet were dangling clear above the ground. I forced myself to sit up and quickly regretted it, there was something wrong with my shoulders, and I couldn't hear the wind for some reason. I coughed and my mask chose that moment to crumble into a million fragments before scattering into the wind.  
  
"Hey," I said strangely, my voice echoed in my ears like it was underwater, wasn't I supposed to say something witty? "Is only game, why you heff to be mad?"  
  
It might have been my imagination, but I thought that Aural looked vaguely disappointed at my choice, as she tried to pull his fingers away from her neck without success, Claire just smiled.  
  
"Felix." I said strangely, "Claire, Rail Tracer, what a dumb name."  
  
Can't even draw trains without cheating, bitch.  
  
I think I might be concussed because my thoughts were even more abstract than normal, we were probably about to die too, I thought stupidly.  
  
I didn't want to die, I didn't think Aural wanted to either or Battery, Dean, Kid Win or Swallow or Climax. I couldn't stop this guy, not without killing him, he was too good, he was too fast, he was too strong, he was _unstoppable_. I highly doubted that he was _unkillable_ , it was just that I didn’t want to be a killer, I didn't want to kill Dean's brother, I didn't want to kill Claire.  
  
I never really seemed to get what I wanted, I thought, not really.  
  
"Well, this has been fun," Claire was saying something again, but I couldn't understand the words. "It's about time I finished up, however."  
  
Was he about to kill her? If he did, I would have to kill him, but I didn't want to.  
  
"Claire," I managed through another fit of coughing. "Don't make me kill you, just leave. Please."  
  
It didn't sound threatening; it didn't sound like anything really, I _could_ kill him, I could put so many wires into the air that it would cover the sky, he couldn't avoid that many could he? Everyone in the train would die, Aural would die first, she was closest, I didn't want that though I didn't want to be a killer.  
  
Claire just shook his head without responding, I was crying now, I noted distantly. The howling wind was tearing the tears from my face, off into oblivion, but I still couldn't hear it. Aural had stopped grabbing at the hand and had her finger pressed to her chest, near the shoulder. I didn't understand what she wanted me to do, and I watched as Claire lifted the knife to slit her throat.  
  
"Please," I choked out.  
  
Don't make me a murderer, I couldn’t quite say. Claire froze and I thought for a moment he had finally found some shred of morality leftover from when he had once been a human.  
  
Claire looked over his shoulder at something behind him, turning slightly in the process. Oh, it was Dean, his upper body stuck out of a hole in the roof, his arm was outstretched towards his brother, a bright colour curled off his palm and evaporated. I looked back at Aural and she was now tapping her finger weakly against her chest. Light from a passing lamppost caught on the blade in Claire's hand and it blinded me for a moment.  
  
Suddenly I understood, sound burst back into existence, the howling wind came back, I had seen all the pieces of the puzzle already, I just hadn't been able to put them together. Claire was able to block things that he couldn't possibly have seen while inside the carriage. Attacks from behind, and attacks from out of his line of sigh, I had thought that he had been using one of his other senses. I couldn’t discount that he had been, but it was more than that.  
  
I had tried to stab him in the leg once back in the carriage, with a wire hidden underneath the debris, It had made no discernible sound and I had only attacked when he had been standing practically on top of it, he still blocked it, even under those conditions, because he had seen it, in a reflection.  
  
He was using the reflections in the shattered glass scattered around the carriage to track everything out of his line of sight.  
  
Dean had managed to hit him with a sneak attack, the only hit we had landed on him since the fight began, because the wind had blocked the sound and he had done it from three carriage lengths away, directly behind him, and out of sight. There was nothing reflective to see the attack coming, the knife had been in front of him, his own body and Aural's had blocked any chance of seeing behind him with the reflection.  
  
Even my wires must have been reflecting vague shapes throughout the fight, at least to some extent. When I had blacked out all of my actively controlled wires had vanished, all of the shields, hands, and even the tiny wires I used to keep track of everyone, all of them had been reflecting the lights from the train and the light posts that we passed along the tracks, but right now the only reflective surface in sight was the knife.  
  
Claire could react to anything within his perception, sneak attacks from out of his range were the only thing that would ever even approach him, but if he saw them in a reflection, or realized that it was coming with another of his senses he would simply avoid it. Aural had figured it out already and had been trying to get me to attack, the knife was dangling just out of Claire's line of sight, he was looking behind him at his brother, and the nearest light post was too far away for the light to catch on the knife. Claire said something to Dean, but I didn’t catch the words.  
  
I wouldn't have another chance.  
  
I created a single wire from my foot, it pierced directly up through Aural's shoulder, before passing cleanly into Claire's chest, he reacted immediately, snapping his gaze back around and lifting the knife to kill Aural, but for once he was too slow. I split the singular wire buried in his chest into a million branching tendrils that tore through his body in an instant.  
  
Claire stopped moving abruptly and let out a strangled laugh, it was alarmingly loud and filled with mirth, he dropped the knife after a moment and gently pushed Aural away from him, she stumbled a couple of steps before dashing away from him, stopping alongside me then turning to face him.  
  
Claire had an uncountable number of wires sticking out of him all over his body, they all originated from the middle of his chest, and the movements he had made to push Aural away had torn great rent's in his skin, I couldn’t help but think that he looked like a twisted version of myself when I used my power, he was completely covered in blood now, except his perfect white teeth, still pulled into a wide smile, a dark red puddle was expanding outwards from his feet.  
  
I managed to drag myself to my feet with a combination of wires and Aural's help, I watched Claire for a moment before retracting the wires as carefully as I could, as if I did it gently enough he would somehow be alright. The second he was free he immediately took a step towards us and we both stepped backward in shock, he took another step and then stumbled before falling face down on the roof dead.  
  
Dean was staring at the scene in horror, with his hand still partially outstretched. Climax and Swallow appeared next to him, climbing onto the roof through one of the holes before starting towards us. I pushed Aural towards her teammates before stumbling towards the side of the train, she watched me go silently.  
  
"Try not to get arrested, dumbass," I said quietly and wrapped some wires around a passing lamppost. Aural nodded as the wires grew taunt and I slipped from the train.  
  
I was now a killer.


	15. Chapter 15

21st, Monday, 2:29 AM.  
  
Urchin's Apartment.  
  
When Coil finally picked up the phone I almost sobbed in relief.  
  
"Urchin." Coil said coolly. "You’ve finished the job already?"  
  
This job was supposed to take a couple of weeks to complete, at least that was the impression Coil had given him initially, If all the police, PRT, media, Protectorate, and the rest of the heroes hadn’t found the guy yet, it was unlikely that I could have done it in just a couple of days. However, I only ever called him after the job was complete, so there was no doubt that Coil was curious as to the outcome. This time was no different in that regard, I was calling him after I had finished the job, but he had absolutely no idea just how badly it had gone.  
  
"The job is finished. I have two broken arms, both of my shoulders are out of their sockets and the rest of me isn't doing much better." I told him evenly, trying to keep the pain out of my voice, I don’t think I succeeded. "Know any healers for hire that _aren't_ Panacea?"  
  
I probably could go to Panacea and she would fix me up sure, but I would have to wait until she was next at the hospital. Which wouldn’t be until late this afternoon at the earliest, and there was no way in hell that I was going to wait that long. Panacea probably wasn’t the best choice either, Dean had seen me get kicked halfway through the train, it was possible he would tell the heroes and they would be on the lookout for a tall skinny guy, with black hair and broken arms.  
  
Coil was silent for a long time, no doubt trying to find the best solution to the problem at hand, he had a stake in this mission too, after all, it was almost a full minute before he finally spoke again.  
  
"I see," Coil said calmly. "Othala of the Empire is available for healing work, for upfront cash payments."  
  
It was good enough for me, I didn’t care what their creed was, I just wanted my body to be unbroken again. I had plenty of money to pay, provided Othala’s rates weren’t insanely high, I still saw the massive mound of money in my mind sagging down in the middle.  
  
"Where?" I asked voice strained.  
  
Coil put me on hold, the absolute mother fucker, he was probably calling up Othala to see if she would play ball.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later I was sitting next to a hot blonde chick in a skin-tight red bodysuit, in a very poorly lit room, her hand rested comfortably on my thigh.  
  
If I wasn't in so much pain, and if she wasn't a white supremacist, I might have even fired my shot. Othala was a couple of years older than me at most, she was rather short and came packaged with two other parahumans, hurray a bundle. The first was a girl about my age in a tight green hooded-bodysuit, Rune. The other parahuman was a jacked blonde dude in a red shirt with an armored chest piece over the top that had been painted black, Victor.  
  
The healing was taking a while, it was some form of strange regeneration, slowly dragging my body back into a better condition. I didn’t know the specifics of how it worked, but It didn't blunt the pain at all and every time something snapped back into place a shock of pain ran through my body. I was doing my best to distract myself by trying to telekinetically move Othala’s hand further up my thigh, with nothing but pure willpower, I wasn’t having much luck, unfortunately.  
  
Victor broke the silence suddenly and with it my concentration faltered.  
  
"So how did you manage to break both of your arms, dislocate both shoulders and break a bunch of ribs?" Victor asked curiously, looking almost impressed.  
  
Rune was looking green at the description and Othala's hand still stubbornly refused to move.  
  
"I got a bit too fresh with Alexandria," I said easily, through the wires that were covering my face, Othala's hand tightened briefly around my thigh and I considered it a success. "She's not really a first date kind of woman, apparently."  
  
Victor started laughing like it was the funniest thing he had ever heard, and I had even managed to draw a few giggles out of Rune as well. Othala just shook her head in, don't think I couldn't you smiling, lady.  
  
Goddammit, why is it only assholes, killers, and fucking racists?

* * *

Ten minutes, two-thousand dollars, and one shiny offer to join Empire Eighty-Eight later, I was on my way home.  
  
In the year since I took that first job from Gaston and started on my journey to become a mercenary, I had curated a reputation for being a professional. I always completed the job no matter what, mostly because I was incredibly careful with which jobs I accepted in the first place, and as a result of my care I always got paid.  
  
Coil must have been putting in some advertising work for me behind the scenes though because I started to get people _asking_ after me through him. I knocked most of the bad jobs back, some of which weren’t really bad, just well outside of my current abilities. It had kept my record shiny, glistening, and unmarred. I had never failed a job, and eventually, this had turned out to be a blessing.  
  
Clients started paying Coil, and in turn me, in advance with the expectation of a successful job. I always finished the job and I always got paid, this time was no different, I was paid in advance, I completed the mission, I found the Rail Tracer and I stopped him. The fact that I had only managed it by luck and a combination of seven desperate heroes and villains was beside the point.  
  
So, when an anonymous bounty emerged a couple of days later; to kill the mercenary 'Urchin'. I knew that I had well and truly fucked up, this time I hadn't been selective, I hadn’t taken a step back and thought about the consequences, instead, I had let my greed drag me along in its wake.  
  
When Daniel Stansfield had hired me for the job and paid in advance; It was probably with the expectation that I wasn't about to murder his eldest son.

* * *

21st, Monday, 9:27 AM.  
  
Chorus's Base.  
  
Chané Laforet sat at the round table that had been pushed into the corner of the room, she hated it, if she was being honest, the circle fit poorly in the corner and once again she thought about ‘accidentally’ breaking one of the legs, instead, she looked away from it annoyed.  
  
Graham was still sleeping on the couch in the middle of the room, his left arm was badly broken and they had wrapped it in a temporary sling, they would take him to the hospital in a couple of days, once the city cooled down a bit from all the excitement. He had taken some strong painkillers already and ten minutes later was snoring loudly on the couch, he would be fine for a couple of days.  
  
If they were lucky Panacea would be working at the hospital, but Chané would go and find out her schedule in a couple of hours anyway, so they wouldn't have to rely on luck. Nice was passed out with her head resting on a small bench that was bolted against the wall, there was a bottle of scotch of the table next to her half-empty, and a shot glass lay next to it on its side, dribbling liquid down onto the floor.  
  
Graham and Nice had traded stories with her about what had happened from there perspectives, they had also managed to retrieve the loot before they had made their way up onto the roof. Miss Militia was too busy performing first aid on Battery to do anything about it, the younger hero, Kid Win had stepped bravely in front of them to ask what they intended to do but had eventually let them pass without incident. The blonde boy with the hand blasts had already bypassed them all and had his torso sticking out of a hole on the roof.  
  
The three members of Chorus that still lived had jumped from the train as soon as they got the chance, every single one of the non-cape members had refused to answer their phones, either dead or captured. Dune, the perpetual troublemaker of their group had been killed by the Rail Tracer, she had known it was him as soon as she had seen the hair, she thought it ironic that Dune and his killer had both looked somewhat alike.  
  
Chané touched her shoulder where the wire had passed straight through, it had burned like a white-hot knife when it had pierced her, and now her shoulder throbbed in a low pulsing ache that made the entire area around it feel weak.  
  
Claire Stansfield was the single most dangerous person she had ever fought, nothing she had done had worked, and he had done things that she had never even considered trying. He had blocked attacks that nobody should have been able to, avoided things with unnerving casualness, he had moved with a fluid grace that had made her own movements seem clumsy in comparison. Chané power lent her an amazing ability to react to threats, avoid damage and deal it back in precise attacks, but to Claire, it had meant absolutely nothing, he had dominated them all, and she knew that they were only still alive because he had been playing around.  
  
Chané had felt like the young girl who had triggered in that alleyway all over again, after getting her powers she had beaten stronger capes and been beaten by them in turn, always one or the other, but when she had fought Claire, it had been the first time she had ever felt truly _outclassed_ in a fight. He had been something else entirely if the blonde boy hadn't managed to hit Claire from behind, and if Urchin hadn't immediately acted, she would be dead.  
  
Chané thought back to the scene, Urchin's mask was a shattered mess and he had been crying, he looked younger than she would have guessed, given how tall he had been. Chané remembered the wire passing through her shoulder, the knife falling to the roof of the train, the spikes protruding from every inch of Claire's skin, the look of horror on Urchin’s face.  
  
Urchin had killed Claire to save her life, and it had broken something in him.

* * *

22nd, Tuesday, 6:29 AM.  
  
Protectorate Headquarters.  
  
Hannah waited for the debriefing to start.  
  
They had been stuck on the Flying Pussyfoot for far too long, they had found that the conductor's cabin had been sabotaged when they finally managed to get to it. Everything in it was destroyed, in an almost calculated way, they couldn't get the train to stop, they would have ended up riding the damn thing all the way to Chicago if Dragon hadn't arrived a couple of hours later to assist them.  
  
Urchin and the three members of Chorus had disappeared from the train sometime before Dragon had arrived. Miss Militia and the other heroes had been trapped on the Flying Pussyfoot for seven whole hours in total, Dragon hadn't been close by at the time of the attack. Hannah had done her best to make Battery comfortable and strapped her leg tight to avoid it tearing anything. They had rushed Battery back to the Rig immediately, while Dragon had organized vehicles to ferry the civilians to hotels, airports, and hospitals. They had done their best to clean up the blood and bodies before to many of the passengers could see them.  
  
A day later, and here they were. Armsmaster, Dauntless, and Dragon were already here, Assault was with Battery in the infirmary, they were organizing a visit from Panacea with the leaders of New Wave. They were only waiting on Velocity now, it figures that the fastest of them was the one who was late.  
  
They had already debriefed Battery, and talked to Dean, but neither of them had seen everything. After Claire had broken Battery’s leg and dislocated her shoulder, Urchin had moved her away from the fight and back into the carriage. Only Aural, Urchin, and Dean had been left fighting Claire Stansfield, and only until Dean had been similarly deposited back into the carriage with them. They couldn’t debrief Urchin, Aural, Swallow, or Climax for obvious reasons.  
  
Kid Win had been practically glued to her side during the entire event, on her orders, so he was spared from having to sit in on the meeting, he had stuck by Dean’s side in the aftermath of the incident. Dean Stansfield had been a mess when he told her what had happened before he was tossed off the train, he had started crying when he told her what had happened after he had climbed back up. According to him Claire had Aural dead to rights and had been about to kill her, so Dean had hit his brother in the back with an attack meant to distract him, and Urchin had used the opportunity to launch a kill shot.  
  
Hannah could understand the action, she would have taken the same shot had it been her in his shoes. Claire Stansfield had killed over twenty people in less than a month, he would have likely racked up hundreds more if he hadn’t been stopped. He was a serial killer, and Urchin had killed him to save another person’s life, it was a pretty cut and dry case, he was obviously still a villain despite classifying himself as a mercenary, you couldn’t rob banks and not be, after all, nothing had changed on that front. They would have to bump his threat level up a bit, Armsmaster would likely develop some training scenarios for fighting against someone of his skillset and they would all move on with their lives, there were bigger threats in Brockton Bay then a single young cape, however versatile his power.  
  
Hannah thought back to the first time she had met him, he had brought a dead man and the villain String Theory to the Protectorate’s front door. He had been crying at the time, obvious even through his blank white mask, his posture had told her more than enough, he had fled soon after.  
  
Urchin was young, most likely the same age as the Wards at a guess, he styled himself as a mercenary and did things that had gotten him labeled as a villain instead, robbing banks and beating up heroes, but he had never deliberately maimed someone or killed prior to this event.  
  
When Daniel Stansfield had come to pick his son up, his face was a visage of anger, but it wasn’t directed at his son. He hadn’t threatened them or made a scene, likely because he had denied them access to the train in the first place, but it was only a matter of time before his lawyers came after them, Hannah was certain. She heard something at the door and her eyes flickered over to identify what it was, Velocity looked sheepish as he stepped over the threshold.  
  
"Sorry, I was _running_ a bit late?" Velocity joked awkwardly.  
  
Hannah just sighed.

* * *

25th, Friday, 11:00 AM.  
  
Dean tried to keep his mind from circling back around to what had happened on the train, instead, he thought back to his dad’s reaction, he had been furious, but not at Dean. His dad had raged about the protectorate, raged about a ‘Coil’, and raged about the Rail Tracer.  
  
Dean asked him who Coil was, and Daniel had watched him for a while before explaining. His dad had apparently contacted this ‘Coil’ and had hired Urchin through him, hired him to find the person who had been killing people on the trains, Daniel was worried about this exact scenario. If someone had been murdering people on trains there was no way that they wouldn’t attack the Flying Pussyfoot.  
  
Dean wondered if his dad would have hired anyone at all if he had known that it was Claire. His dad had never made it a secret of how much he loved his children, and nobody had told him yet about the killer’s identity. Dean swallowed before telling him about Claire and his fury had turned instantly to disbelief and shock. Dean broke down again despite his best efforts, he had spent more time crying in the last three days, then he had in his entire life. It was the _only_ time he had ever seen his dad cry at all. Claire would have a private funeral, with just his family once the body was released from police custody. Hours later his dad’s fury had returned, but this time it was a quiet focused thing, and it was directed almost entirely at Urchin.  
  
His brother had killed many people and had been in the process of killing another when he had been killed. Dean had spent _years_ feeling the hate and fury of every angry person he passed in the streets, and he had quickly come to dislike the feeling, which was why he couldn’t hate Urchin for what he had done, he could only feel a wretched ache in his chest that he thought might never leave.  
  
Dean wiped his eyes and cleared his mind as best he could, he would think about that later when he was alone. Right now he had a job to do, he flipped the visor of his new helmet down to cover his face. Dean could feel the crushing weight of hundreds of minds swirling with excitement, happiness, sadness, and fear, they came from the other side of the curtain in front of him, accompanied by the loud chatter of a crowd. When they called his name out a moment later, he stepped through the curtain and onto the stage, to stand next to Aegis, Clockblocker, Kid Win, Triumph, and Vista.  
  
Gallant had joined the Wards.


	16. Chapter 16

April 10th, 2011, Saturday, 9:02 AM.  
  
I was lazing on the couch watching the morning news, the Brockton Bay Wards were getting a new member, again. Shadow Stalker had joined last year sometime, around August I think, she totally looked like a Death Eater though, I’m not going to lie, she had a creepy-ass mask and wore a black hood over an almost entirely black costume. Triumph bless his little heart, had gone, and aged out of the Wards, who only allowed people below the age of majority. Triumph had been fast-tracked straight into the Protectorate.  
  
I wiped an imaginary tear from my eye, they grow up so fast.  
  
The newest addition to the wards should have called himself 'Absolutely Jacked Man' but instead, he was getting introduced as Browbeat, I wondered idly if he had been given a stern talking to about his choice of name, heh. Browbeat was a tall guy and his muscles looked like they belonged on an absolutely top-tier bodybuilder, his power must have been Super Swole. Browbeat’s costume covered his entire body except for his eyes, it was a dark blue bodysuit with a simple repeating blue diamond pattern of a lighter shade.  
  
Browbeat had been positioned between Vista and Shadow Stalker, he absolutely dwarfed them both, the size disparity between the three of them made him look even bigger by comparison, and I had no doubt that it had been done for exactly that effect. I watched them answer question after question from the press, each of them pausing thoughtfully before answering. Either they were being fed the lines through an earpiece or the questions were curated in some way, they were all softballs, it was all part of the show I guessed.  
  
I sighed, this was boring.  
  
I was sitting around doing nothing, but at least this time I was getting paid. Coil had contacted me a couple of weeks ago, out of the blue with a job offer that he wanted me to look over only this time the client was him. I hadn’t done an actual job for Coil in the entire time we had worked together, strangely enough, he was simply my hook-up for _finding_ jobs, so this was very unusual, and had the potential to mess up our relationship if it went badly.  
  
The job he proposed was a long-term contract, which wasn't something I had done before, which he had to have known, but I let him give me the elevator pitch anyway. I would be on call, for the next few months. I would get paid a small amount for each day that I was on call, regardless if he a task for me to complete or not. If he did have a task, I would get paid a fair amount appropriate scaled to the difficulty of the task, if the task involved combat, bonus pay would be negotiated based on the perceived threat level. It was honestly a good deal all around, and I was tempted to take it outright, but I was much more hesitant than ever when it came to just agreeing to things these days, what was the catch, I asked him.  
  
Coil straight up told me that the targets I would be expected to fight could be anyone, the Wards, the Protectorate, New Wave, Azn Bad Boys, Empire Eighty-Eight, the Merchants, and any number of other people. It depended entirely upon on who was between Coil and whatever his goal was at the time, a goal I wouldn't be made aware of unless it was necessary for the job, Coil had added.  
  
This worried me a bit, but I had been working with Coil for around two years at this point, and as far as I knew he had never intentionally fucked me over or ratted me out to anyone. Even when that bounty had popped up, he hadn’t blinked an eye at it and continued to send work my way without pause, we had a good but distant working relationship.  
  
I was worried if I said no that it might come to an end.  
  
This wouldn't be as crippling to me as it would have, say a year ago, when I hadn’t been as well established as I was now. Now I was smarter and stronger than ever, I even had a reputation for kicking the ass of any aspiring bounty hunter that thought they could take me down. I had money to spare, I even had some connections through which I could find more work. I could have said no and gotten along simply fine without him, but the man had helped me out for years, so I decided that I would help him out in return.  
  
I told him to call me when he had a target in mind.

* * *

April 11th, 2011, Sunday, 11:57 PM.  
  
It was just before midnight when Coil called me for the first time, I snatched the phone up from my bedside table and answered it immediately.  
  
"Yes?" I asked calmly, already getting out of bed.  
  
"The Undersiders, who are currently working for me," Coil said coolly, "Are about to be attacked by Lung and Oni Lee."  
  
I didn't say anything for a moment, and Coil continued to explain the job.  
  
"I need you to make sure they don’t die." Coil said evenly. "I believe you know what both of them are capable of?"  
  
Come on man, the first job is fucking Lung of all people? With a side of Oni Lee? Of course, I knew what they could do, who the fuck didn’t? I didn’t say any of this, of course, I wasn’t an idiot.

I took a deep breath, and then let it out, I had a job to do.  
  
"Where are they?" I asked easily, after a brief pause.  
  
My phone dinged and I moved it away from my ear for a second to see what it was, the docks, the Undersiders base, and the last known location of Lung were all listed on a map application that I definitely hadn't installed on my phone. Yikes, there were some pictures I needed to delete ASAP. I didn't think Coil was the type to be looking at my longboi, but I hadn't made it this long by taking risks.  
  
"I'm on my way." I agreed, after a moment of studying the map.  
  
"Very well." Coil said coolly, before hanging up.  
  
The entire time I was on the phone I had been dragging my costume on with wires, and by the time Coil had hung up I was ready to go. I hopped out of the window of my apartment and shot off into the sky in an instant.  
  
It wasn't until a minute later that I realized that I had no idea who the fuck the Undersiders were.

* * *

April 11th, 2011, Monday, 12:02 PM.  
  
I had initially gone high to get my bearings before setting out towards the blinking dot on my phone, I started moving lower when I got closer to the docks, trying to see if any fighting had broken out already. I saw a burst of fire over a rooftop in the distance and changed directions immediately. I came across a tall man who was shooting fire all over the place and yelling in anger. That would be Lung, but I couldn't see Oni Lee anywhere. Lung was a big dude, covered in awesome tattoo’s and he had a striking mask covering his face. I spotted who he was fighting after a moment of searching, there was a girl in a dark costume hiding on a roof nearby, completely unmoving, probably one of the Undersiders.  
  
Lung leaped from the street, straight up onto the roof in a single jump. Holy fuck, that was some crazy strength, I brought myself closer and did my best to draw his attention away from the girl.  
  
"Hey, Burnt-Face Man!" I yelled mockingly, before slapping him with a person-sized wire-construct shaped like a hand. "Try this on for size!"  
  
Lung dug his clawed feet into the roof and face checked my construct, but it only drove him backward about halfway across the roof instead of sending him flying.

What!?

The girl hiding on the roof was looking at us both in shock and I couldn’t help but notice that she still wasn’t running away.  
  
Come on lady get moving.  
  
"Uh," I said weakly. "Did it fit?"  
  
Lung let out an angry shout and shot a massive blast of fire at me.  
  
I barely twisted out of the way of it and Lung raised his hands up before firing off a barrage of fireballs like he was from a god damned anime or something. I moved out of the way, but he keep shooting at where I had been floating before, I watched him strangely for a moment, what on earth was he doing? Lung stopped firing after a while but kept his arms outstretched, he made no move to try and aim at me again.  
  
"What are you aiming at?" I said hesitantly.  
  
Lung yelled again and adjusted his aim, he began to mercilessly blast the area I had been in before I moved away again. What in the seven hells was this guy on? Was he setting up a god damned hell-zone grenade or something?  
  
"He can't see you!" The girl yelled out suddenly, before desperately diving out of the way of Lung's sudden leap towards her.  
  
 _Oh._  
  
I caught her with wires before bringing her up beside me, she was struggling and trying to escape like a crazy person, but she stopped after a moment while looking down at the distant ground. Lung tried to shoot us again, but I just moved out of the way once more, he said something in a language that I didn’t speak, sounding angry before he started scratching at his eyes with his claws.  
  
"Hey, chill," I said easily. "I'll take care of this guy, you should get out of here, Coil's orders."  
  
I gave her a giant wire thumbs up and put her down on another nearby roof. Lung raised his head and it was a mess of bloody cuts, it started healing slowly and now he was looking straight at us, there was a fire in his eyes.  
  
"He has high-speed regeneration," The girl said belatedly, "Super hearing, pyrokinesis and he gets bigger and stronger the longer he fights."  
  
All useful information, I thought, but I knew all of it already, except for the super hearing part.  
  
"I blinded him with pepper spray already," She continued, trying to give me every bit of tactical advice she could between each breathe. "I also made hundreds of insects bite him on his," She hesitated, "You know."

She jerked her head strangely.  
  
"I don't know. Bit him on his what?' I asked, curious.  
  
Her posture looked awkward as she pointed down to her crotch area and Urchin felt a slow realization come over him. Lung was getting bigger now, pumping himself up, he must have heard us talking because he let out a yell and jumped at the building we were standing on. I slapped him back down to the ground with a hand three times the size of the first one, he hit the roof with an explosion of debris before breaking straight through it.  
  
There was now screaming coming from the buildings nearby, but I was much too upset to care.  
  
"You did _what_ to his dick?!" I shouted in outrage, "That’s messed up, and what's this about insects?!"  
  
I tried to picture it and flinched away from the mental image, the girl let out a noise of protest.  
  
" _I_ didn't bite him on the dick." She said angrily, "I made the _insects_ do it."  
  
That's what I said, you crazy woman.  
  
Lung had started to climb back onto the roof, he was even bigger now and didn’t look injured at all by my last hit.  
  
"It was a combination of bees, wasps, black widows, brown recluses, and some fire ants." She said, "I tried to get as much venom into his system as I could, to try and slow down his healing."  
  
I was horrified, and I made sure to tighten my wires around myself locking down all of the gaps. I was going to buy some heavy-duty ski goggles, or a visor or something, and a cup! I wasn't stepping near this chick without full coverage ever again.  
  
Spider bites on the dick, fucking what.  
  
"Lung!" I shouted down at him, and he turned to look up at me. "Your dick is going to fall off, man! You need to get to the fucking hospital or something!"  
  
Lung’s mouth dropped open a bit in surprise and the girl was now looking at me like I was an idiot.  
  
"Skin necrosis and shit man!" I continued wildly, waving my arms. "That shit is fucked up!"  
  
I could have sworn that he looked down at his dick for a moment, I felt a shiver rock my body and shook my hands out at the idea, Lung suddenly let out a yell of rage.  
  
I fucking feel you, bro, that shit is _nasty_.

He leaped at us again and this time I hit him with two hands from both sides and turned it into a big ass ball around him. I was tempted to throw the poor guy towards a hospital or something, but he was far too angry right now, and his junk probably looked like a 'Bad Dragon' product now. You couldn't take that kind of stuff into a hospital, they had rules against that sort of thing.

I wondered idly if that tinker Dragon had ever tried for that sponsorship before, I shook my head and refocused on the situation at hand.  
  
I lifted both constructs up into the air and then flung them down towards the ground, releasing Lung to smash straight into it, he impacted with the noise of shattering concrete as he completely cratered the ground, he also got right the fuck back up as if nothing had happened.  
  
Jesus Christ.  
  
Lung stopped advancing for a moment and looked behind us as three gigantic things suddenly leaped off the building above us and landed right next to us.

I had to stop myself from slapping everybody the fuck off the roof out of sheer reflex.  
  
"Who the fuck are you guys?" I demanded from the closest beast.  
  
The colossal beast tilted its head strangely at my words and I realized suddenly that there were people riding on top of the things.

There was a tall dude in black leather who was wearing a white skulled motorbike helmet, his costume looked like what Dean’s bargain bin version wanted to be when it grew up. Sitting behind him was another guy who was dressed like he was royalty or something, he had a fancy circlet on his head and everything. A thickly built girl with short dirty-blonde hair sat on a different creature, she wore a big fur-lined jacket and a dog mask that she must have bought for two-dollars, woof. The final girl had long messy blonde hair and a skin-tight purple bodysuit that had black highlights and a large 'Tt' on the front of it.  
  
The group climbed off the giant spiky beasts and the dog-girl whistled before pointing down into the alley. Where these giant creatures _dogs_? They dove off the roof and attacked Lung with fervor. I watched him get tossed around for a moment before turning back to the group.  
  
The Tee-tee girl opened her mouth to speak but I cut her off with a particularly important question.  
  
"Why do you have such large Tee-tees on your chest, woman?" I asked with a shit-eating grin that nobody could see, but everybody could hear.  
  
She immediately looked annoyed, I was truly a master at first impressions. The guy that was dressed like royalty started laughing his ass of.

Heh, finally someone that _wasn't_ a sociopath laughing at my jokes, I was worried for a bit there I’m not going to lie.  
  
The girl that I had been protecting shifted uncomfortably inside the wire grip I still had on her. I eyed her warily for a moment, ain't nobody biting me on the dick. I let her go onto the roof and made the 'I'm watching you' gesture at her, but she merely stepped back a bit from everybody.  
  
The tee-tee girl finally spoke up, still looking pretty annoyed.  
  
"Hilarious." She deadpanned, before turning to the bug-girl. "We’re the Undersiders, thanks for the help."  
  
What the hecking heck?  
  
"Hey! What about me?" I pouted behind my mask.  
  
Tee-tee glanced over and gave me a shallow nod before dismissing me once more, wow, unbelievable.  
  
Wait if _they_ were the Undersiders, then who the hell did I just save? My gaze snapped over to the big guy with the helmet when he suddenly started moving towards the edge of the roof to look down at Lung and the giant doggies.  
  
"What did you do to him? He's supposed to be stronger than this." The skull guy said evenly, and I turned to watch the battle with him.  
  
Lung was tossing the dogs everywhere, he was clearly stronger than them now, but the dogs were durable enough that they kept coming back and latching onto his limbs before he would fight them off all over again, the bug-girl spoke up, repeating what she told me before, minus the dick thing.

I watched her warily when she skipped over that part.  
  
"Introduction time. I’m Grue." Grue said calmly and pointed at Tee-tee. "That’s Tattletale."  
  
Grue turned and pointed at the girl with the fur-lined jacket.  
  
"That's Bitch.” Grue continued, "She also goes by Hellhound."  
  
Wow, rude, why not call her that then? I thought, he also didn't say anything about the last guy, this dude was kind of a dick.  
  
"Fuck you, Grue!" The guy with the circlet said annoyed, "I'm Regent."  
  
"What are your names?" Grue asked evenly, pointing first to me than the bug-girl.  
  
"Urchin, Mercenary," I said easily, wondering if they knew about the bounty.  
  
Grue nodded hesitantly before turning to the girl and we all watched her shrink in on herself at the attention.  
  
"I," Bug-girl started hesitantly. "haven't picked one yet." She finished more quietly.  
  
"I know what we can call you!" I said immediately, but she cut me off.  
  
"Absolutely not!" Bug-girl shouted and crossed her arms in front of her, like a game show.  
  
Well shit, she was quick.  
  
"The heroes will be here in about a minute," Tattletale said smiling. "If they see all us baddies duking it out, they will definitely arrest us all, we had better skedaddle."  
  
Who the fuck says skedaddle? I'm also totally not a baddie, I’m a goodie who does work for baddies, there is totally a difference. Bitch whistled and the dogs managed to scale the side of the building in a handful of seconds.  
  
Lung was still crawling out of a hole in the side of a building that they had managed put him through, he was also really fucking big now, taller than the giant dogs and he just kept getting bigger. I was going to have a hell of a time trying to contain him now, I might have to go for operation toss Lung into the ocean after all. The Undersiders all climbed up onto the dogs and turned to leave with nothing more than a wave.

They tore off into the night, leaping across the rooftops, leaving me alone with the girl who murdered Lung’s dick.  
  
"Hey," I said seriously, and she looked at me, looking ready to run. "Don't bite anymore dicks okay?"  
  
"Shut up!" Bug-girl yelled angrily, then looked surprised at herself.  
  
Strange girl, I thought before starting to respond, which of course was when Armsmaster popped his head around the corner of a building and shot Lung in the crotch.  
  
"What the fuck is wrong with you people?!" I yelled in anger.  
  
Lung yelled with me, furious at the world.

He managed to take two stumbling steps towards Armsmaster before he fell on his face, he began shrinking a moment later. Armsmaster immediately started to tie him up, he cuffed his hands and feet before tossing the villain over his motorbike, which had rolled around the corner a couple of moments before, seemingly on its own accord.  
  
"You need any help getting out of here?" I asked the bug-girl while keeping my eye on the hero.  
  
I was getting ready to bail because if I stayed Armsmaster might try and bully me, the bug-girl looked at me then down at Armsmaster, clearly skittish.  
  
"You're going to let me go?" She asked and I blinked at her from behind my mask.  
  
What?  
  
I started to respond but Armsmaster cut me off, he was standing at the foot of the building looking up at us. I watched as he crossed his arms, he truly was a master at using those things, what an honor to be in his presence.  
  
"Urchin." Armsmaster said calmly, "Who’s the girl?"  
  
When I abruptly picked her up with wires, both her and Armsmaster tensed in alarm. I quickly moved her off the roof and lowered her down to him before vanishing the wires, bug-girl stumbled a step before moving backward out of arms-reach of the hero.  
  
Heh.  
  
"She was beating the crap out of Lung before I got here." I said easily, "I was just passing through; thought I should help out."  
  
Armsmaster took a step backward from the girl at the news, realizing that anyone that could tangle with Lung would be dangerous. I looked down at them both, and the girl was staring back up at me.

I've got her this time, I thought. Armsmaster might be able to talk some sense into her, I just had to warn him.  
  
"Bug-girl!" I said abruptly, "Don't bite anymore-"  
  
" _Shut up!_ " Bug-girl shouted again, and I fled.  
  
Armsmaster watched me go no small amount of worry etched into his posture. Fuck it, I was afraid of her, I'm not going to lie.  
  
Be careful man, she's got dick spiders.

* * *

April 11th, 2011, Monday, 1:18 PM.  
  
My phone started to ring just as I reached my apartment building.  
  
"Hey," I said cheerfully.  
  
"Urchin." Coil sounded pleased. "Well done, I've received word that Lung has been taken into custody."  
  
"Yeah," I said easily. "I never saw Oni Lee though, want me to go after him?"  
  
Coil seemed to give that decent amount of contemplation before he spoke again.  
  
"No," Coil said finally, "I will call you with your next task."  
  
You better not leave me waiting for three fucking weeks this time man.  
  
"Alright," I said just as he hung up.  
  
Say goodbye next time asshole! How rude.

* * *

April 11th, 2011, Monday, 12:17 PM.  
  
I watched as Dean and Chris ate lunch together, on the other side of the cafeteria. They chatted and messed about with each other, looking like any other group in the cafeteria. They hadn't changed that much in a year, but I saw them pretty much every day so maybe I just couldn't tell. I narrowed my eyes in thought, they were both a bit taller, probably. I looked to the other side of the room easily spotting Rory Christner talking to Victoria and Amy Dallon, the celebrities of the school. I wondered if they knew he was Triumph, Victoria suddenly leaned over and pulled Rory into a hug.  
  
Oh, they were dating, there was no way that they didn't know who he was then, right? Amy rolled her eyes at the pair, before looking away from the two in disgust. I laughed quietly to myself before I stood up, I took my tray to the rubbish bin and cleaned it off, before stacking the tray on top with all of the others.  
  
My sense of paranoia had been renewed at school, I was once again studying everyone at the school, nearly everyone I had encountered during the Lung fiasco had looked and sounded around my age. Did the Undersiders all go to Arcadia as well? Was the school secretly being overrun by villains? I shivered, or worse? I couldn't protect myself at school with my wires, so I was still wearing a cup, just in case. I walked past the heroes on my way out the door, but they didn't even give me a second glance.


	17. Chapter 17

April 14th, 2011, Thursday, 10:59 AM.  
  
The news had been stuck in a constant cycle for the last few days, repeatedly showing the same clips at every opportunity and every single time I saw them I would find myself a little more annoyed. ‘Lung defeated by Armsmaster: The battle for Brockton Bay!’ was the headline streaming across the banner at the bottom of the newscast.

Lung was currently being held in a secure facility while they completed his trial, a trial that was being held despite Lung’s absence, he would most likely be sent straight to the Birdcage with all of the crimes he was responsible for. Dangerous capes tended to have amazingly fast trials because there was always a constant danger of them making a breakout attempt or being a recipient of one. Lung was apparently not in any condition to be moved anywhere after his battle against ‘Armsmaster’.  
  
I scoffed.  
  
Neither I nor Bitch’s dogs could have done any lasting damage to the man, not anything that he couldn’t immediately walk off anyway. The only person that could have caused the extended stay in critical condition was the bug-girl, probably from filling Lung’s body up with more poison than blood.  
  
Strangely enough, there was absolutely no mention of me, the Bug-girl, or the Undersiders in the news coverage. Armsmaster had totally jacked our cred, what a total asshole. I would have to get him back for that eventually.

I turned off the TV when they restarted the clip of Armsmaster shaking hands with Roy Christner, who was still the mayor of Brockton Bay.  
  
I could not stand the circle-jerk any longer.  
  
My phone rang sometime later, it was Coil with another task. The Undersiders were supposedly out doing a job for him but they had been pinned down, and they needed someone to assist with their escape, primarily as a distraction so that they could get past the heroes that had them surrounded. This seemed to be becoming a reoccurring theme for them.  
  
Had I actually been hired as the Undersider’s babysitter?  
  
I told Coil that I would be there soon, fortunately for everyone involved I had spent the last two days practicing a little special something for the next time I had to baffle someone with bullshit, and this was looking like it just might be the perfect time to use it. I stared at where my portable stereo sat on the shelf.  
  
It was time.

* * *

April 14th, 2011, Thursday, 11:05 AM.  
  
When I arrived at the Brockton Bay central bank, I immediately realized that it hadn't changed much, not from the outside at least. It also brought with it a tidal wave of memories that I was most definitely not ready for, of planning, laughing, and messing around with the Full Frontals before it had all gone wrong. I shook my head in a failed attempt to disperse the thoughts plaguing me and tried to focus on my surroundings. There was a throng of people being held back by officers and members of the PRT at either end of the street, no doubt doing their best to keep them away from the bank.  
  
The Wards were out in full force, and every single member was present and accounted for except for Shadow Stalker, strangely enough. I felt a twinge of disbelief that the Undersider’s had decided that attacking the place in broad daylight was somehow a good idea, either they had absolutely no idea what they were doing, or they had done this on purpose.  
  
Either way, Coil didn't deserve this kind of nonsense.  
  
I pushed down all of my doubts before darting straight over the top of the Wards to land between them and the bank. The Wards were immediately on high alert before I had even landed. They immediately started spreading out into a large half-circle across the courtyard and road, but by the time they had gotten into position, I was just about ready. I had used the surprise to begin creating wire constructs all over the pavement between us and I placed my beat-up old stereo on the ground beside me.  
  
Humanoid figures slowly rose up from the ground to stand before them, roughly six feet tall with an obviously female figure that was completely covered in bulging wire muscles. Before long twenty of the wire-people stood around me, ten to each side and every one of them had a wire cable that traced back to where it was tethered to me. The Wards moved backward at the sight of so many constructs, to place themselves in between my wire-army and the normies.  
  
I reached down and pressed play on the stereo.  
  
"Ahem," I said loudly.  
  
"We need to take it back in time," Came a woman’s voice from the stereo.  
  
Whoops, I hadn’t restarted the song, I would just have to go with it.  
  
"When music made us all unite!" I sang at the top of my lungs, and completely off-key, "And it wasn't low blows and video hoes!"  
  
I saw Vista's mouth drop open and Aegis started laughing loudly which was strangely out of character for him.

Clockblocker had his arms crossed over his chest, his stance looking profoundly serious. The rest of them were in various states of confusion, as my wire constructs began to dance in perfect synchronicity on either side of me.  
  
I was able to keep track of every single wire I used at once, some kind of multitasking enhancement that I had been gifted alongside my wire control, way back then. Moving constructs around like this wasn't even difficult, the front row wire-people on both sides dipped down low before performing some very naughty moves and I heard someone behind the Wards wolf whistle.  
  
"Am I the only the one getting tired!" I sang, making sure to point my hand at the Wards before moving it slowly across the lot of them, thrusting my hips all the while. "Why is everybody so obsessed, money can't buy us happiness!"  
  
Browbeats large form was just shaking his head and Aegis was utterly losing his shit now, I had never seen him like this before. Kid Win had his pistols pointed directly at me, but he was watching the reaction of his teammates as much as he was me, I could even see Vista tapping her foot to the song.  
  
"Can we all slow down and enjoy right now!" I pleaded before whipping my completely covered hair over my shoulder, my constructs copied the move with their long wirehair. "Guarantee we'll be feeling alright!"  
  
"Everybody look to the left!" I sang, lashing my hand to the left, the wire constructs followed along. "Everybody look to the right!" They followed again.  
  
There were more whistles and calls from the crowd behind them.  
  
"Can you feel that yeah, we're paying with love tonight!" I sang, before falling backward onto the pavement.  
  
A construct on either side caught me before I could hit the ground, and they pushed me back up to my feet.  
  
"It's not about the money, money, money!" I sang, spreading my arms high above my head before slowly bringing them down to my sides. "We don't need your money, money, money!"

Shake, shake, shake.  
  
Aegis had completely tapped out by this point, and Clockblocker was staring at his teammate, seemingly unhappy. I still couldn't see Shadow Stalker anywhere, it was a shame that she would miss out on my incredible distraction, Gallant was staring at me silently, entirely covered in a suit of Power Armor.  
  
"We just want to make the world dance, forget about the price tag!" I sang and shook my finger at them like they were the ones being naughty.  
  
The constructs copied me diligently, I was probably getting too far into it if I was being honest.  
  
"Ain't about the uh cha-ching cha-ching-" I sang before I was abruptly interrupted by a donkey punch to the back of the head.  
  
A strange pressure pressed down on my mind, something like fear, but I managed to push through it.  
  
"Shut up!" Glory Girl shouted as she slammed down into the ground behind me. "You are _ruining_ the song!"  
  
My vision went blurry for a moment as I was bounced off the pavement like a rag doll, I barely managed to flip myself forward into a tumble before doing my best to carry the momentum back to my feet in an uncontrolled maneuver that left me looking like a staggering drunkard.  
  
"You cannot sing _at all_!" Glory Girl accused mercilessly. “It’s the worst thing I have ever heard in my entire life!”  
  
The stereo continued to play, and Glory Girl made no move to stop the music.  
  
“Jesus Christ lady, pull your punches,” I said in alarm, as I stumbled drunkenly to the side.  
  
I ended up only a couple of feet away from her, she had her arms crossed now, completely unworried, I had better change that. I lashed out suddenly and punched her across the face, but it felt like I broke my hand in the process.

Glory Girl didn’t even flinch, she just stared at me strangely for a moment.  
  
I did it again, with the same result.  
  
"Ow!" I howled in pain. "What are you even _made_ of?"  
  
I shook my hand out to try and banish the awful pain racing up my arm.  
  
"I'm invulnerable, _idiot_." Glory Girl said nastily.  
  
"I _know_ that," I said obnoxiously, "But what are you actually made of-"  
  
I punched her in the face again before diving away, most of my wire constructs lunged towards her and immediately started dogpiling her, the few ones that were left over spread out to engage the other heroes.  
  
Glory Girl was quickly buried underneath the assault and began trying to tear her way out. I spun around, already expecting Aegis to be coming at me from behind the sneaky little bitch he was, but he was actually standing right next to Vista, watching. Gallant was engaging one of the constructs that had moved towards Vista. Browbeat was moving carefully to flank me, while Clockblocker was sprinting straight at me at a stupidly fast speed.  
  
What?  
  
I waved my hand across in front of me to ward him off and a wave of wires followed the motion, but he just circled around it in an instant before punching me square in the chest. I felt a spike of alarm when he touched me thinking for a moment that I had somehow just lost, but time continued on normally, and for some reason, I wasn’t frozen.

Clockblocker broke off after the hit when he was engaged by several newly built constructs I had panic made.  
  
I was sent flying backward from his punch before I used some wires to halt myself. Browbeat was now right next to me and he lashed out with one of his giant arms. I reached out and caught his fist with my own massively reinforced arm, clamping down on it tightly when he tried to pull his hand back.  
  
Kid Win had been taking shots at me and the constructs since the start of the fight, but he immediately stopped shooting at me the moment Browbeat had stepped into melee with me, no doubt afraid of friendly fire. I sent out another five wires before taking a moment to thicken the tips until they were capped with large round panels, reminiscent of shields.  
  
I stuck the shields around Kid Win in a rough cube shape trapping him inside, he immediately stuck his hand through one of the gaps and started trying to shoot at one of the wires holding the panels up.  
  
Goddammit man, just stop.  
  
I plugged the gaps with smaller shield-wires, and he yanked his arm back inside to avoid it getting squished.

I turned my attention turned back to Browbeat who was still trying to pry his fist out of my hand. Browbeat hit hard strangely hard, and it clearly wasn’t just purely because of his size, there was way too much force behind the hit for it to be just that.

He didn’t seem quite as strong as Glory Girl, but he was definitely stronger than Aegis. My wire enforced arm had held up under the strain, although I had to reinforce it greatly, the force had traveled through the wires, not able to touch me at all.  
  
If I had tried to block that _without_ the wires, he would have broken my arm easily, and likely taken my arm off at the shoulder. These guys really needed to stop hitting everyone so hard, they were going to end up killing somebody one of these days.  
  
Browbeat was looking at me in shock, and I stared him straight in the eye.  
  
"Are you ready now?" I said harshly, "To witness a power, not seen for thousands of years!?"  
  
I shouted the last part in his face and he immediately stopped trying to free his hand from my grip. Instead, he lashed out with his other arm in panic, so I caught it as well and started screaming in his face like I was trying to go even further beyond, the fake pointy wire hair sticking upwards into the air probably didn’t help.  
  
I quickly wrapped him in wires and lifted him up off the ground, he was still using his power to do something to mess with my wires, but my control was better than his disruption by far. He couldn't keep up with all the wires at once, likely because he didn't have the enhanced multitasking needed to keep track of so many things.  
  
I let his hands go and he floated in the air before me trapped, I mimed hitting him with a 'Kamehameha' while still yelling incoherently at the top of my lungs before making him fly off slowly through the air towards his teammates. Vista tried to catch him out of the air, but I tripped her over with some wires, and she fell over under his massive weight.  
  
I started laughing at them before planting my hands on my hips.  
  
“It almost like a rite of passage for you guys to get your asses kicked by me at this point.” I taunted them, tangling Vista and Browbeat up a bit.  
  
Gallant stepped away from his own fight against my constructs to try and shoot me with his sissy-beams, so I created more floating wire-shields to block his advance. Aegis had finally moved to help the two on the ground and was struggling to pull Browbeats large form to his feet, while Vista was yelling for him to get off her.  
  
Had Aegis been skipping the gym? What on earth was going on with him?  
  
As soon as Vista was free, she made an angry gesture at me and a piece of the ground stretched up at great speed, smacking into me. I was sent flying back towards the bank, tumbling violently through the air and then smashed through the front doors of the bank.

I ended up lying on the floor of the bank right in the middle of the lobby; these dudes _needed_ to chill with the amount of power they were hitting me with. I looked around and realized that there were people everywhere.  
  
Tattletale and Grue were standing next to each other, while Regent was right next to the now broken doors, two of the hulking dog creatures stood next to the boy, growling at my abrupt entrance. There was no sign of Bitch herself, and the third dog was missing as well, either hiding or not present at all.  
  
There were normies all over the bank floor, sitting or lying with their hands on their heads. I had to do a double-take when I saw the girl that was sitting on my left.

I pointed to her and shook my finger in her face, Amy Dallon stared at me in shock.  
  
"First it's Laserdream," I said sadly, "Now it's Panacea, why does New Wave keep trying to rob this bank?"  
  
The normies muttered in confusion at the accusation, while Amy spluttered for a moment, unable to counter my incredible observation, she recovered after a moment and smacked my hand out of her face immediately resorting to violence just like a villain.  
  
Real mature, Amy.  
  
"When did you join the Undersliders anyway?" I asked suspiciously  
  
Tattletale was just staring at me in exasperation, but Grue was a picture of stoicism. I was distantly aware that Glory Girl had almost gotten free of the mess I had buried her in, so I tried to rearrange the wires to catch her again, but the others were G _allantly_ helping her, heh.  
  
"It's the Under SIDERS," Tattletale said annoyed.  
  
I blinked at her in confusion, before remembering the damn mask I was wearing, Grue nodded at me in either a greeting or confirmation about the name, I wasn’t sure. I turned to check on Regent, but he just gave a jaunty wave.  
  
I grinned.  
  
"Hey man," I said cheerfully, before turning my head back to the others. "What a dumb name, Underside of what? S-M-D-H."  
  
I spelled out the last bit out loud and shook my head obnoxiously, Tattletale looked about ready to respond before Bug-girl suddenly walked into the room.  
  
"Oh, hell no!" I shouted in alarm, quickly climbing to my feet.  
  
I immediately tightened my wires around me making sure that I was as bug-proof as I could get, thank god for the visor. Bug-girl looked at me in might have been shock, before she noticed Amy and then just froze.  
  
"You damn dick-" I accused, but she immediately cut me off.  
  
"Shut up!" Bug-girl shouted in frustration.  
  
I took a fear-filled step backward.  
  
"Right!" I said nervously.  
  
I turned to address Amy, who was still sitting on the ground.  
  
"I am going to go _back_ out there to finish kicking the Wards asses, you and the rest of the Undersliders should make a break for it before you get captured," I told her firmly.  
  
Amy spluttered on the floor, as I spun towards the door, I stuck out my hand on the way past and Regent gave me a high-five, I was glad he hadn’t left me hanging, that would have ruined my exit.  
  
I stepped through the hole I'd made in the front doors and back outside to find that Glory Girl was now completely free of the wires, which I had left as a patch of terrain that was reaching creepily out at anyone who was nearby. Clockblocker was flying over the top of the wire field before dropping down to land next to her.  
  
Since when the fuck did Clockblocker fly? Something was rotten in the state of Denmark.  
  
"This is absolute nonsense," I declared. "First Panacea is robbing a bank and now Clockblocker is flying."  
  
Glory Girl glanced at the bank with a weird look on her face.  
  
"It's like I'm in Bizzaro land," I said bemused.  
  
I watched as Gallant strode up to stand beside Aegis, still silently staring at me, my good humor abruptly took a dive.  
  
"Hey man," I said quietly. "I'm sorry for how things turned out. I wish I could have done it differently."  
  
I felt awful for what had happened, and I wish I had been stronger, or smart enough to figure out a way that hadn’t result in the death of his brother. Claire's face had joined the others in my dreams, alongside Gaston, Belle, and my parents.  
  
"So do I," Dean said sadly, instead of the hate that I had expected. "He was going to kill that woman; you did what you had to do."  
  
The others were all watching the exchange quietly and I felt a surge of something foreign in my chest at his words, relief maybe.  
  
"Urchin, are you going to let us take you in?" Dean said from behind Gallant’s armored helmet.  
  
I shook my head with a smile that he couldn’t have seen, but we both knew the answer to that.  
  
“I’m on the clock, Gallant." I said amused, “Maybe next time.”  
  
I didn't think I would have been able to be so understanding had our roles been reversed, Dean was a better man than me, that was for sure and the Wards were lucky to have him.  
  
"Right then,” I said amicably, before clearing my throat loudly. “Thank god you’re here, Wards. Panacea is robbing the bank, she must be in league with the known villain Laserdream."  
  
I set the scene with an old classic, it was a shame Triumph wasn't here, he would have gotten the joke, but Vista and Clockblocker both reacted nonverbally to it at least, but not Aegis I noticed.  
  
It finally clicked, Clockblocker and Aegis had switched costumes, I felt like an idiot for not noticing sooner.  
  
I pointed at Aegis and Clockblocker with finger guns and started making 'Ahh!' noises. Clockblocker, in Aegis’s costume, shuffled a bit next to Vista, he had stayed out of the fight mostly, maybe because of the same concerns I had about the dangers of combining our powers?  
  
"Very sneaky of you," I said amusedly while getting ready to attack. "But-"

A cloud of darkness suddenly rolled out of the bank and covered us all.  
  
Grue's power; what the fuck man?  
  
I immediately started throwing out a growing ring of wires, I moved them outwards slowly through the darkness, tagging everyone’s location before moving on. I moved away from Gallant who was now the closest to me, I really didn't feel like beating him up after our little heart to heart.  
  
People suddenly started running out of the bank in mass numbers, pinging their locations by running into my wires. I felt tiny things start to land on my wire armor and some of the other ones. I immediately destroyed them all without mercy, not today Bug-girl.  
  
I suddenly realized that the music had stopped, actually, all sounds had stopped. A trio of giant dogs suddenly emerged from the bank and hooked a hard left. I tracked them easily as they had destroyed the thin wires that were in their path with ease, I couldn't see them, but I imagined they were carrying the Undersiders on top of them.  
  
The Undersiders had escaped and the job was just about complete, someone flew straight up into the air hitting another tiny wire, either Glory Girl or Aegis. Something large started to lift up into the air beneath a rather short person, probably Vista.

Whatever it was snapped and dragged yet more tiny wires up with it. I started to pull all the wires I still had outside into a giant hand construct the size of a bus before starting to generate even more wires.

I pushed myself up and out of the darkness before looking around, I could see where a thick tendril of darkness had shot across the street and into an alleyway, but the heroes had also spotted it.

Glory Girl started flying in that direction before my giant wire hand reached out and yoinked her back down into the darkness with a yelp. Vista spotted me a moment later, already starting to move another pillar of brick in my direction, I held out my hand in the universal symbol for halt.  
  
Surprisingly enough, she didn't stop.  
  
"A bunch of normies ran out of the bank when the darkness first came out!" I called out, "Be careful or you might squish them!"  
  
Vista immediately stopped stared down at the darkness in frustration. Aegis, still in the wrong costume flew over to her, in case I went on the attack again. Glory Girl was going ape shit down below, like she was fighting the final boss in Super Smash Brothers 64, swinging wildly at it in the dark.

I started grabbing everyone in the cloud that I could feel with my wires and lifting them up, starting with the ones near Glory Girl.  
  
I also took the time to lock Gallant up in a similar prison to Kid Win. Gallant had started moving unerringly in my direction as soon as I’d moved away from the door, he must have been able to sense me in the darkness. The normies rose up through the darkness and started to appear one after another. Aegis was looking at me intently as I started moving them toward him and the pillar they were standing on, Vista used her power to make it even larger, enough for them all to stand on. I put the people down gently before ganking Glory Girl with a second giant hand from behind.

Hah, you thought there was only one, but there was two all along!

I lifted her up out of the cloud and floated her over next to them; the hands had locked fingers together around her.  
  
"I think that was everyone." I said honestly, "Unless I missed some-"

Someone walked out of the bank suddenly. I grabbed whoever it was and brought them up as well, it was Amy.  
  
"Panacea! You _idiot_ , you were supposed to escape with the rest of the Undersiders!" I yelled at her. "Are you sacrificing yourself so that they can escape? How noble of you!"  
  
I heard someone in the crowd say, “Panacea is in the Undersiders now?”  
  
Goddammit, I was magnificent.  
  
"I am _not_ with the Undersiders you IDIOT!" Amy yelled furiously.  
  
Wow, rude.  
  
"I am truly shook by this turn of events," I deadpanned.  
  
Amy let out a wordless noise of frustration and the darkness abruptly started to dissipate, it had held up for much longer than I thought it would, but they should have been long gone by now.  
  
Oh, maybe Grue was expecting me to use it to run away? Whoops.  
  
Price tag started playing again when the darkness vanished from around the stereo, it was still on repeat, I wrapped a wire around the handle. The pillar that the heroes and all of the normies were on slowly lowered to the ground. The normies began to flee towards the police almost immediately, and I waved to the crowds who were making a great deal of noise.  
  
"No need to thank me," I said humbly, holding up a hand to them.  
  
I sent the wires holding Amy over to them but surprisingly enough, none of the heroes looked very thankful, how strange.  
  
"Just doing my job,” I said honestly, as I handed Amy off to them. “The only thanks I need, is for this evil-doer to face justice.”  
  
I gave them a jaunty wave and then suddenly zipped off over the bank, doing my best to flee the area. Panacea yelled something after me, but I was already too far away to hear it, Aegis valiantly flew after me, but he couldn't keep up for long. When he finally gave up, I let all my wires at the bank vanish, freeing the rest of the Wards.  
  
It’s all about the money, money, money.


	18. Chapter 18

April 16th, 2011, Friday, 8:47 PM.  
  
When the first explosion went off only a couple of blocks away, I almost had a heart attack.  
I immediately thought that somehow, we had missed another of String Theory's bombs, from years ago and that it had finally exploded. I found out this wasn't the case with a series of breaking news stories that had taken over the internet and a bunch of TV stations soon after.

An entire day later there were _still_ bombs being set off occasionally, and every time I heard another explosion, I found myself becoming more pissed off.  
  
There was a parahuman laying waste to Brockton Bay, again, just how many tinkers were related to bombs exactly? Was Swallow going to go off the deep end next and go on a rampage? The individual explosions were tiny in comparison to the one that String Theory had used years ago. It appeared they subscribed to the idea of quantity over quality, at least that’s what I had initially thought before I had actually seen the insane effects some of these things were causing.  
  
Bakuda was apparently a quantity _and_ quality kind of girl.  
  
With Lungs detainment, Oni Lee and Bakuda had clearly come to some sort of arrangement. There was a short clip of her taking credit for the explosions playing on repeat while the newscaster spoke in a solemn voice. The first bomb was thought to have detonated yesterday at 6:05 PM, it was followed by about twenty others in quick succession. They had slowed down a great deal by this point, but they were still at least one going off every couple of hours all over the city.  
  
The thing that made this bomber scary was that each of the bombs had some strange secondary effect. There was a video that was being played on the news that had been recorded with someone’s mobile phone, the vertical framing was truly awful. It showed a twisted spire of ice that originated from a building, the part of the building that had been inside of the blast radius had been _transformed_ into ice and not just covered in it. You could tell because when the ice had started to melt, so had the _building_.  
  
Another of the videos showed a café that had a massive sphere cut out of the front of the shop. Everything was simply missing where it had exploded, with a perfectly clean line, I repressed a shiver at the damage it looked reminiscent of the type of explosion that had killed Belle. I turned on my computer at some point and was checking half a dozen news sites for more information. I also had my apartment window open so that I could keep an ear out in just case I had to go outside and show Bakuda why it was a bad idea to come near my apartment.  
  
There was a link that had begun to show up with increasing frequency on forums and chatrooms, it had been condensed into a short URL with no identifying information. But once you clicked on it, it was obviously Leet and Ubers live streaming page. I clicked the play button and it showed an entirely one-sided fight between them and the Undersiders. Bakuda had made a dramatic appearance afterward, along with half a hundred other people, seemingly normies, but by then the Undersiders had beaten the two unconscious already.  
  
I replayed it to get an idea of how Bakuda did things, I couldn’t really get a good read on how the Undersiders fought, they were mostly running away. Bitch and her three mammoth dogs weren’t present either. The Undersiders managed to fight their way free of the ambush and ran from the deranged woman. Bakuda was initially following them on foot, but at some point, she started riding in a jeep while taking shots at them with a grenade launcher. I checked the time code and found it started around 5:57 PM with Bakuda showing up around 6:00 PM.  
  
The upside was that I was certain that if it weren’t an ambush that left me debilitated or dead, I was absolutely sure I could wreck her shit if it came down to it. I wondered why Coil didn’t contact me, this was literally what he had hired me to do after all. The video was replaying the part where the Undersiders, as if in slow motion, ran away from an explosion before they hit an invisible barrier. As soon as they hit it, they shot forward at normal sprinting speed before the camera feed abruptly blacked out and the stream ended. It was possible that Coil didn’t know that this had happened until afterward, it was an ambush after all. Maybe the Undersiders didn’t have time to contact him while they were running for their lives.  
  
I took my phone out and immediately called Coil, I had best make sure, he picked up the call after about three rings.  
  
"Urchin," Coil said sounding harried.  
  
"Dude I just watched the Undersiders get destroyed by Bakuda, Leet, and Uber." I said bemused, "What on earth is going on?"  
  
Coil paused for a moment before replying in a strange tone.  
  
"You _saw_ them fighting?" Coil asked accusingly and I was confused for a second as I tried to figure out the problem.  
  
Oh, he thought I had watched them get wrecked and done nothing.  
  
"The Livestream that Leet and Uber have?" I offered an explanation, "I just saw it online, what should I be doing?"  
  
"Oh, of course." Coil sighed audibly, I had never heard him this emotive. "I currently have no tasks for you."  
  
Like hell, people were getting fucking murdered outside and he didn't have anything for me to do?  
  
"Coil," I said with forced calm. "I'm not sitting back and doing nothing while this crazy cape is blowing up my city. Do we know where she is, where _any_ of the ABB are?”  
  
Coil didn't say anything for a long while, I would have thought he had hung up if not for the continued sound of quiet breathing.  
  
"That fight was at the trainyards," I continued quietly into the silence. "Do the ABB have a base there?"  
  
"We don’t know where Bakuda is currently located." Coil finally replied.  
  
It was like a punch in the gut.  
  
"So, we do nothing then?" I asked miserably.  
  
This was bullshit, there had to be something I could do, maybe I should just go out in costume and starting looking for members of the ABB.  
  
"I am currently organizing a meeting of the minds to take place a week from now," Coil said distractedly, "I will be attending it in person, I require you to do so as well."  
  
A meeting of the minds? I wondered what that meant exactly, we had also done all of our job stuff over the phone, I hadn’t actually met Coil in person since that first time with Gaston.  
  
"Who's going to be there?" I asked quietly, mostly to distract myself from the painful thoughts.  
  
"The entire villain population of Brockton Bay, if I can manage it," Coil said drily. "We will address the threat that Bakuda and the ABB pose to the city."  
  
All of the villains, huh? At least we were actually doing something about it, after all, I just had to wait an entire week before we made a move, couldn't we speed that up at all? That was a long-ass time to wait with this crazy woman blowing shit up.  
  
"Anything I can do to speed that up?" I offered hopefully, "Get in contact with people for you? Extend the olive branch?"  
  
There was another long pause, and I heard some muffled noises in the background, but I couldn't make it out, I was pushing him pretty hard, I know but I _needed_ to do something.  
  
"I have something for you after all," Coil said distractedly. "I have been trying to get in contact with Purity, a former member of the Empire, but she has been non-responsive."  
  
Fuck yeah, here we go, put me in coach, I'm ready.  
  
"You want me to get her on board?" I said outwardly calm, but inside was an entirely different story.  
  
Recruiting Purity, this sounded like it would spice things up, looks like the Full Frontals were going to be making a glorious resurgence.  
  
"It would be good to have her at the meeting." Coil replied distantly, his attention still elsewhere.  
  
"Alright," I said excitedly, "Where are we meeting?"  
  
Coil told me he would send me a message with the details later and then abruptly hung up.

I didn’t care at this point; my mind was racing as I put together everything I knew about Purity. She would probably be a tough nut to crack, she had ditched the Empire at some point, for reasons that I didn’t know. That had to of taken some balls, they were the largest group of capes in the city, and with dangerous members like Hookwolf.

If she walked away from that without any trouble she might not want to join my squad.  
  
Eh, what’s the worst that could happen.

* * *

April 17th, 2011, Saturday, 9:30 PM  
  
It had been raining almost non-stop for the entire week, and grey clouds still covered the sky as if the city were in mourning. It wasn't raining right _now_ , but it certainly had the potential to start again at any moment, it was just a matter of when. It certainly made it easy to spot Purity as she streaked across the sky every now and again. For whatever reason, she had been super active the last couple of weeks, which was pretty convenient for me.  
  
I had seen her at least three times over the last two days alone, which happened to be when I started looking for her. I was currently seated on the top of a skyscraper, watching the skyline for more appearances slowly building up a mental map of where she frequented. All three of the sightings so far had been on the south side of downtown. I made sure to keep a low profile on the rooftops and eventually I spotted her again. Purity blasted straight up into the sky from in between a cluster of buildings, she stopped on a dime, hanging in the air for a moment before zipping straight across the city and stopping again before diving down into an alleyway.  
  
Purity was unbelievably fucking fast, but there was no way she could fight at that speed, I refused to believe it.

Velocity, the fastest cape in Brockton Bay was even faster than Purity, but _his_ power did something to allow him to actually interact with the world because otherwise, all sorts of strange shit would happen. There _had_ to be a distinction between her movement speed and her actual combat speed.  
  
Purity seemingly only stuck to moving in straight lines when she was going super-fast, and she only seemed to do it when the area was clear of obstructions. I wondered if she could actually track anything at that speed, or if it all blurred together, I had seen several videos of her fighting other capes, but she had never used that kind of ridiculous speed mid-fight, she only used it to travel or escape.  
  
When I went my maximum speed, everything blurred around me and it made it impossible to see anything close to me or use it in a fight. If I tried I would have been crashing into things and constantly testing how strong my armor was. I would be completely out of control and without the ability to react to anything around me, I was almost positive that she would have the same problems.  
  
Purity’s powerset was supposed to be a variety of Blaster/Mover, she absorbed light my a bunch of sources, she could shoot that light as a beam attack that hit with kinetic force, she could also fly and it was the reason she was occasionally talked about in the same breath as Legend. There was nothing that had _ever_ been mentioned about enhanced reflexes, or super perception or anything of the like.  
  
Either way, I would be finding out soon.  
  
I had already decided on a game plan if I ended up having to fight her or possibly run away. I would stay at a medium-range, create a bunch of wire panels, and keep them between us. Purity had no great durability feats of note and zero strength feats, if I could manage to snag her in wires, I could hold her. I would have to make sure her hands weren't pointed at anything important, so I would make sure that if I had to capture her I would point her hands straight up into the sky.  
  
In the videos I had studied, she tended towards strafing runs while remaining at a distance, which made a great deal of sense given her powers. If somebody got close to her she could make some distance instantly with a burst of speed in any direction that was clear of obstacles.  
  
I felt like, if I could take her by surprise, I could beat her with ease. If Purity ganked me instead, I would be completely screwed for the same reasons, she had enough firepower to level buildings and that would really ruin someone’s day. If I got hit head-on, I would be down instantly.  
  
Fortunately for us both, I wasn't here to fight at all, I was simply going to pop in and give her a recruitment pitch. If she did say no then it would become a pain in the ass, as I would have to beat her up. Making her join the Full Frontals by force wasn’t ideal, but I had my marching orders. I'm sure that wouldn’t happen though, we would have a nice discussion, she would agree to join, and I would be on my way.  
  
What could go wrong?

* * *

April 17th, 2011, Saturday, 10:47 PM.  
  
Purity was quite the busy little bee this dark and stormy night, rushing across the city, flickering across the sky not unlike a flash of lighting. I had seen her a bunch more times in the last hour, and not a single cape tried to take her on in that time, not that surprising. I was hoping that she would soon call it a night because this was starting to become really boring, really quickly.  
  
I spotted her streaking up into the air again, before angling back towards where she had started the night off earlier. I had over the course of the night moved closer to that cluster of buildings, hoping that she would head back there once she finished her patrol, and it looked like I was in luck. I stood still on the roof as she streaked across the city, stopping briefly above me, but she couldn’t see in my hiding place.  
  
I remained still in the shadows.  
  
Purity shot towards the ground to land in the alleyway below, the bright light that surrounded her form abruptly vanishing and leaving a short figure behind in a clean white bodysuit, her shoulders sagged noticeably, she must be pretty have been tired after all that.  
  
I slipped silently off the roof touched down behind her.  
  
"Hey, Purity!" I shouted from right behind her. "Join my team!"  
  
Purity jumped about a foot in the air before letting out a shriek of fright.

I started laughing at her reaction and then everything exploded into light. I yanked myself back up to the roof as a blast of light smashed into the wall underneath me. The now shining white figure that stood with her hand pointed up at me attacked again. I juked to the right to avoid it before pulling myself back to the left again and dragged myself over the roof. Another burst of light smashed into the lip of the roof and showered me in debris. If I hadn't purchased my brand-new anti-Purity tinted ski-goggles I would probably be blind as fuck right now, as it was, it was still hard to look at her at all.  
  
"Wait!" I said still laughing, diving to the side as she cleared the roof.  
  
Purity unleashed another blast and it barely missed me before it left a crater in the roof of the building.  
  
"Hang on!" I yelped in alarm.  
  
I fell backward to avoid another blast before yanking myself across the roof with a wire.  
  
"Who are you!?" Purity shouted furiously. "Why would you come after me here?"  
  
Purity was _still_ shooting at me, maybe I should have done this differently? It seemed like it would be funny at the time, but she seemed pretty mad.  
  
"Stop-fucking-shooting-at-me!" I yelled while jerking myself away from each deadly shot. "and I'll answer you!"  
  
Purity paused for about a second and as soon as I stopped moving to explain, she fucking shot me again.  
  
This, bitch.  
  
The blast clipped my shoulder, but my amour held, the force still spun me to the ground in a dizzying spiral, I reeled myself away again before bringing up some shield-wires between us.  
  
"Hold your fucking horse's lady!" I demanded angrily. "Calm down or I'm going to spank you!"  
  
I created some hands that spread out behind my shoulders and made aggressive chopping motions in the air. Purity stopped for realsies this time, no doubt upon seeing all the random shit I had just pulled out of nowhere.  
  
"You’re that mercenary, Starfish or Crab-Man, something fish related!" Purity said angrily.  
  
"I am _not_ fucking Crab-Man, my name is Urchin!" I said annoyed. "I want you to join my team!"  
  
Purity still hadn't lowered her hands at all, they were both still pointed threateningly at me.  
  
"Why the _hell_ would I want to join your shitty team?" Purity said harshly, taking a step forward aggressively.  
  
Shitty team!?  
  
"Excuse me," I said shocked, "You're one to talk, considering you were the one on the shitty-ass-bitch-boy-Nazi-team!?" She immediately shot me again.  
  
Fuck this, we were going to do it the hard way.  
  
I barely avoided the attack before moving a shield-wire in front of the next shot, it punched about a third of the way through my defense, shit. I thickened the other panels in response and then sent the arms up into the air to come down at her from an angle.  
  
Purity strafed to the side of the attack and the wire-arms stretched endlessly after her, following her path closely. Purity avoided them with ease, moving in a serpentine path with brief bursts of straight-line speed to jaunt out of any of the traps, she continued shooting at me the entire time and her shots were getting stronger every time before they actually started puncturing _through_ my reinforced panels. I thickened them again until they were about a foot deep but each of her attacks were still leaving great big dents in the metal.  
  
Jesus Christ, one clean hit at that strength would one tap me easily.  
  
I thickened my own armor until I was surrounded by several spaced layers of meter-thick walls of metal. Purity immediately started hammering away at my fortress with massive bursts of light that dug scorching trenches in the metal.

I increased the layers and the width again and slid down to the bottom left of the pyramid-like structure. I repaired the damage she was causing within moments and started flying the triangle-made-of-circles thing towards her aggressively. Purity started flying back towards her alleyway and heading lower to the ground, what was she doing? My pyramid of doom cleared the roof, looming over her before I started down towards her.  
  
Purity touched down on the ground before she hit me with the strongest blast yet, it cut through the front five layers of metal panels and shot straight over my shoulder, before cutting halfway into the backside of the pyramid. I gaped at the melted hole, staring out at her in disbelief, she was now kneeling on the ground panting, back in her plain white costume.  
  
What the fuck woman, that would have killed me. Exactly what type of fight did she think this was?  
  
"Hey, asshole!" I yelled at her, angry for the first time. "That almost took my fucking head off!"  
  
My fortress grew massive arms in an instant before I sent them tearing towards her, which caught her around the torso before lifting her into the air. Her arms were trapped at her sides with only her upper body and head still visible.  
  
Purity struggled against the massive articulated metal fingers, and she flickered bright white for a second before she returned to her unpowered state again. I frowned down at her waiting for her to try and explode me again, but she eventually stopped struggling and just stared sullenly up at me.  
  
"Don't tell me you just gave up?" I said angrily, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  
  
Why did she go back to the ground anyway? She could have just flown away if she thought she was losing the fight, and as far as I could tell she was slapping me around for a while there. I couldn’t catch her easily with obvious attacks, and she had been hammering away at me non-stop.  
  
I moved closer until I could make out her features somewhat, she wasn’t wearing a mask. Brown hair, brown eyes, short stature, she was probably in her mid-to-late twenties. I'd never seen her before in my civilian life, and it felt really strange that this pretty, but rather plain woman was a supervillain.  
  
"Fuck off." Purity said resignedly. "I ran out of juice, idiot."  
  
I had never heard of a cape that had a limit to how much they could use their power, I had certainly never felt _tired_ after using mine or ran out of whatever strange energy powered my ability. I had run into _resistance,_ before whatever strangeness had removed my width limiter.  
  
Just who exactly was the weird one here? Me or her?  
  
"That's okay sweetie," I said mockingly, "I hear that happens to a lot of women."  
  
Purity snorted.  
  
"You're an idiot." Purity said evenly, "Are you just going to keep me here forever?"  
  
Purity jerked her head at the fingers of the massive hands that were holding her. I was thinking about it, I'm not going to lie. This exchange had gotten me a bit heated, and I was struggling to keep my anger down, it was probably the near-death part, but who could truly know?  
  
"I'll hold you all night long, if that's what you want, babe," I said lecherously, waggling my eyebrows behind my mask.  
  
"Uhuh," Purity said archly, "I'm sure a kid your age has plenty of experience with that right?"  
  
Oof, she was a ruthless beast, I was turning eighteen in five days goddammit, cut me some slack.  
  
"Okay," I coughed awkwardly, "Moving on. Thank you for joining our team, the Full Frontals!"  
  
I started to clap happily and gestured to her pointedly, but Purity just sighed before sagging a little inside the wires.  
  
"What is the team for? What are its goals?" Purity asked quietly.  
  
That's a great fucking question, I didn't say.

I had no idea, Coil said we needed her on board for the ABB meeting, and rebuilding the Full Frontals was a step towards that. I hadn’t really thought about what we would be doing other than that, or what my actual goals were.

I guess it would just be an extension of my Mercenary job? Mercenary team? Yeah!  
  
"We are pretty much here to kick everyone’s asses," I said thoughtfully, before gesturing to her as an example of an ass I had just elegantly kicked, she looked annoyed at the reminder. "Next targets on the agenda are Lung, Bakuda, and Oni Lee."  
  
Something changed in her expression at that, how interesting.  
  
"Oh, interested are we?” I teased, “Primarily the Full Frontals are a Mercenary group, so we do jobs for money."  
  
Purity just stared at me quietly, seemingly deep in thought.  
  
"What say you, Recently-Defeated-Girl!?" I shouted, before sticking my finger in her face.  
  
Purity narrowed her eyes at the jab before she looked away visibly struggling with the decision, she obviously disliked the ABB, I think I almost had her.  
  
“The Full Frontals have three rules,” I said seriously, “We always complete the mission, we always get paid, and no killing.”  
  
"Fine, I'll join your team," Purity said finally. "and you won't tell anyone who I am?"  
  
I blinked at her from behind my mask, who the fuck even was she? Did she think I knew who every random person in this stupid city was? How arrogant of her to presume that I, the incredibly famous and daring Urchin would know who she was.  
  
"You got yourself a deal," I said cheerfully.  
  
I floated over to her and held out my hand, but she just stared at me with narrowed eyes, I stared back uncompromisingly.  
  
"You've got my arms pinned, idiot!" Purity said in annoyance after I just continued to stare at her.  
  
Oh right.  
  
"Just testing you," I said nervously, before freeing her arms.  
  
I watched her hands carefully as she shook my hand, half expecting her to blow my hands off, but she made no move to attack. I lowered her to the ground and vanished the wires from around her, we stood around awkwardly for a moment unsure what to do before I whipped out my phone.  
  
"What's your number, Sparky?" I asked obnoxiously, before reaching out to elbow her in the arm.  
  
Purity slapped my arm away.  
  
"Don't call me that." Purity said annoyed, she glanced over her shoulder at the building behind her before sighing. "You already know who I am, what does it matter at this point?"  
  
Purity pulled a phone from somewhere I couldn’t see.  
  
"Wow, that plus-one inventory space is coming in strong, huh?" I said impressed.  
  
Purity just looked at me strangely.  
  
"I have no idea what that means." Purity said confused. "What should I put you down as?"

She motioned to her phone.  
  
"I'll show you mine," I said gleefully, "If you show me yours!"  
  
I snatched her phone with a wire, and she yelped in alarm before trying to snatch it back. I floated upside down out of her reach, quickly typing in 'Booty-Call#1' as the name of my contact in her phone. Purity was busy throwing a tantrum below me, so I tossed her my own phone instead.

I clicked back onto the contacts and found a picture of herself with 'Kayden Anders' as the name, what a silly name, jokes totally incoming.  
  
I glanced down to find that Kayden was still busy looking through my phone, I clicked onto the camera and then onto pictures, I quickly nosed my way through a bunch checking for the goodies, but there was none.  
  
"It's the current year!" I said bewildered, before tossing it back to her. "Where is the god damned nudes?!?"  
  
Kayden fumbled with the phone for a second before glaring up at me, she messed with my phone for a bit longer before holding it back out for me to take.  
  
"Andy Bowman," Kayden said quietly. "You’re not even worried that I might tell someone who you are?"  
  
"Kayden Anders," I said easily, like a fucking cool-guy. "Consider it a trust-building exercise."  
  
Kayden nodded hesitantly after a moment, probably thinking about how awesome I am.  
  
"Besides if you fuck me over, I'll spell your name out in the sky in hundred-foot letters." I teased, before tugging off my mask.  
  
I smiled at her, but she just sighed, the Full Frontals were back in action.


	19. Chapter 19

April 22nd, 2011, Thursday, 9:02 AM.  
  
I spent my eighteenth birthday alone, and it was much less eventful then the previous two had been. I skipped school for the day, instead catching a bus into the central business district. I spent an hour or so wandering around and checking out the novelty shops before I ended up at the cinema. I bought a deluxe ticket, I wasn’t ever going back to those shitty normal ones. The movie was a medieval comedy, about a pair of princes that were trying to save one of their fiancés. I got myself a frozen drink and some popcorn, before sitting down to watch it, idly noting that there was barely anyone in the room.  
  
I realized sometime later that I hadn’t spoken to anyone all day, other than the short exchange with the cinema staff. I had received no birthday greetings or cards with good wishes, it was kind of my own fault anyway really, the only people who could have even known it was my birthday would be at school, but even then I barely interacted with most of them, it was unlikely that anyone would have known in the first place.  
  
It sounded pretty sad actually when I thought about it.  
  
Don't get me wrong, I got along with people fine, even if people did tend to become annoyed with my constant joking. I talked to people in class, and during break times in the cafeteria. I would respond to questions with light-hearted jokes at people's expense, I was on surprisingly good terms with most of the kids my age, with only a few enemies around.  
  
Fuck you, Thomas Payton.  
  
At the end of each day I would go home, but none of the people that I interacted with in school had ever made an effort to talk to me outside of it, and I certainly wasn’t going to reach out, it seemed too much like begging for friendship. I wasn't willing to make people give a shit about me by forcing the issue, so instead, I stayed in my lane. I went to school every morning, I left school every afternoon, my school life was completely separated from the outside world, and I was fine with that.  
  
I tossed my half-eaten popcorn into the bin on the way out of the building, still smiling from the hilarious movie, it was definitely the funniest thing I had seen all year. I stepped out of the front doors back into the city, the sun was shining and there was an empty bench nearby with my name on it, carved long ago with a thin wire on the underside of the seat.  
  
I sat around and just watched people for a while thinking, the explosions had slowed down a great deal once Lung had been rescued from his cell. There had been a great deal of noise on the news about it this week. I had tried to contact coil but every time I did it would just ring out, the dude was totally ghosting me, I was considering hunting him down and kicking his ass for the disrespect.  
  
The thing that was actually annoying was that it felt like I was being sidelined, even when the Lung fiasco had occurred almost a week ago, he hadn’t even called me. I never even got to tell him that I'd succeeded in recruiting Purity either, I knew intellectually that Coil must have been busy setting everything up for the meeting or whatever, trying to organize a bunch of crazy villains was bound to be tough, but I wasn’t exactly patience incarnate.  
  
I supposed I couldn’t just lump all the blame onto the guy.  
  
Speaking of Purity, I realized like a day after I had successfully recruited her that I hadn’t offered to pay her any money. It made me wonder why she had accepted so easily, was she secretly rich and didn’t need any? Even so, who wants to work for free, I would have to split what I was getting from coil with her. It was the best I could do for now, if she wanted more I would have to pay from my own personal funds.  
  
Yikes, my precious money mountain.  
  
I had been keeping in contact with Kayden via instant messaging, just to make sure she wasn't about to vanish and hang me out to dry. Our chat logs were bizarre though, every now and then I would send her a message about something to make sure she hadn’t been blown up by one of Bakuda’s bombs or assassinated by somebody.  
  
I felt pretty disappointed if I were being honest, movies had given me the impression that sending secret messages to a hot older woman would be a lot raunchier. I had sent her a bunch of winky faces and “You good?” messages. Kayden would simply reply with variations of “Yes.” or “I’m fine.” I sent her an eggplant once for laughs and she’d left me on seen for _hours._ Even last night I had sent her a hilarious meme and she didn’t even reply!

This was _bullshit_ , our working relationship was going to need some work.  
  
My phone dinged suddenly bringing me back to the present, it was a message from Coil, I felt a thrill of excitement. The meeting was happening tomorrow night, at a place called Somer’s Rock, I had better go find out where the hell that was exactly.  
  
Well, if I couldn’t crack Kayden with winky faces and eggplants, I would just have to win her over with my charming personality.

* * *

April 23rd, 2011, Friday, 6:17 PM.  
  
I slowly lowered myself downwards like I was that guy from Mission Impossible. I touched down only a couple of buildings away from the roof that Purity and I had fought on. I dropped down into a seated position and quietly looked around the area. The trip from my own apartment to here had only taken less than a minute of flying, I probably should have called before I had left, I was going to have to wait for a while now.  
  
On my way over I had made a note of all of the barriers and roadblocks that were set up in this part of the city. The military, the police, and the PRT were all working in conjunction to block off areas that were deemed to be a likely target for Bakuda or those that had already become a target and where now simply too dangerous for civilians to be around due to spent bomb effects. Nobody wanted a building to suddenly fall down and squash someone, after all.  
  
I fished my phone out of the pocket sewn into the inside of my coat, and typed out a quick message to Kayden, telling her to ‘meet me in the alley’, along with a bunch of winky faces. Surprisingly enough, she agreed almost immediately which sending me some mixed signals. Was she responding because I had told her to come outside? Because it was work-related?  
  
Of course, she responds to work-related stuff but ignores the memes, this was _completely_ unacceptable.  
  
I studied the area curiously, the height of the building letting me see a fair distance down the road. There had been walking patrols heading all around the city down the sidewalks, guys in military gear were openly carrying assault rifles as well, which had to mean that shit was getting really serious on the Anti-ABB front.  
  
What all of the ‘good guys’ didn’t know, was that the upcoming villain meeting was going to be the nail in Lung's big dragon-shaped coffin. The protectorate had been copping a lot of flak for 'allowing' the dangerous parahuman to escape their custody, which was the dumbest thing I had ever heard, I have never understood why the public always goes ape shit when something like this happens, it's not like they opened up his cell and held the fucking door open for the guy. They had obviously taken precautions to try and contain the dude, but sometimes shit just happens, I would like to see the normies try and keep fucking Lung of all people in a cell.  
  
Bunch of assholes, really.  
  
I noticed the back door of the building in front and to the left of me open up before Kayden stepped out covered in heavy coat and sweatpants. Oh wow, maybe that was why she had gone at me so hardcore, we were literally fighting next to her apartment. Whoops.  
  
Kayden stopped when she spotted me sitting on the roof, legs dangling off the edge, she looked remarkably uncomfortable as she stepped further into the alleyway and then a handful of seconds later she appeared on the edge of the roof, the bright glow receding as she dropped down onto the roof, she must have removed the coat and sweatpants down below, because now she was wearing her white bodysuit.  
  
Kayden stood on the edge of the roof, watching me quietly for a long moment.  
  
"Urchin." Purity said coolly, all professional-like.  
  
Uh oh, she sounded way too serious.  
  
"Yikes," I said easily, and she looked unsure for a moment. "Just chill out, you look like you’re going to a funeral."  
  
After a moment of silence, she let her shoulders relax, and let out a sigh.  
  
"The only funeral I want to go to is Lungs," Kayden said dryly and I laughed.  
  
What a shit joke, I loved it.  
  
"That's the spirit, but we’ll get to that in a moment." I laughed. "First we need to address the elephant on the roof."  
  
Kayden narrowed her eye at me, and I abruptly realized that it might have sounded like I was calling her fat, I coughed into my hand awkwardly.  
  
"Excuse me?" Kayden said annoyed.  
  
"I sent you the single _funniest_ meme I have ever seen,” I said passionately, "and you fucking left me on seen!?”  
  
"Oh, for fucks sake," Kayden said exasperated.  
  
I pointed at her angrily.  
  
“The Full Frontal’s communication network never goes dark, got it?" I ranted, “I would be well within my rights to bust your ass back to training!”  
  
“I haven’t _gotten_ any training!” Kayden said sounding pissed off, but keeping her voice in a whisper, “I’m more experienced than you! _I_ should be training _you_!  
  
"What the fuck? I am your commanding officer!” I yelled at the top of my lungs and thumping my chest with a fist, “You aren’t treating me with the respect my station deserves!”  
  
“What kind of commanding officer sends eggplants to his subordinates?!” Kayden furiously whispered, still trying not to draw attention.  
  
“The best kind!” I yelled with passion, refusing to back down, “Drop down and give me twenty!”  
  
“Fuck off,” Kayden scoffed, but she was fighting a smile. “Idiot.”  
  
I considered that a win and let the matter drop, for now.  
  
"What are we going to do about this meeting anyway?" Kayden said more seriously, doing her best to refocus me, "There are going to be some big names at this thing. Kaiser, Coil, and Faultline."  
  
Funny that she didn’t mention the Undersiders or the Merchants, or me.  
  
"Yeah, if Coil managed to get everyone he wanted to come," I said easily. "Nearly every villain and mercenary in the bay is going to be there."  
  
Kayden bit the tip of her thumb and started pacing on the roof, looking pretty stressed at the thought.  
  
"How are we going to handle it? Do we just stay silent on the sidelines?" Kayden wondered aloud. "Do we go in hardcore, so they don't fuck with us?"  
  
I was looking at her strangely, I hadn't even thought about it at all. Did something like this actually matter? Was I supposed to put on a show or something? Try to intimidate everyone? I scratched the back of my head in wonder, what was the point?  
  
Fuck it, I’ll just wing it.  
  
"Don't worry, Sparkles. I've got it all handled already," I said confidently.  
  
“ _Don’t_ call me that,” Kayden said immediately, eyes narrowed once more.  
  
"I’ll handle the negotiations, you just stay chill and try not to explode anyone unless they attack us first, got it?" I said seriously.  
  
Kayden looked impressed that I had already thought ahead and nodded in agreement, looking much calmer than before.  
  
"We should probably head over now anyway," I said idly, pulling my phone out to check the time.  
  
6:32 PM.  
  
"When does it start?" Kayden asked curiously.  
  
I lifted myself up into the air, and Purity followed, lighting up the immediate area with her power, I had to look away from her even with the goggles.  
  
"About two minutes ago," I said cheekily, before taking off.  
  
Purity yelled something at me, but I couldn't hear her over the wind, she pulled up alongside me and then we dashed across the city towards 'Somer's Rock'. It didn't take long at all to get there and we both stopped to hover in the air above the roof of the building, taking a moment to scope the place out.  
  
A bunch of people were heading for the door, all of them dressed in bizarre clothing. They had already spotted Purity, on account of how god damned bright she was, and the guy wearing the top hat waved to us, which I returned happily. They were clearly capes judging by their clothing, and almost certainly villains by their choice of a watering hole, but I didn’t know who they were offhand, I would be doing some research tonight it would seem.  
  
Somer's Rock was a total mess of a building, with every curtain and window closed uptight. There was a single wall-mounted light above the door, its glass casing mostly shattered, but even without the case it barely illuminated the entrance.

I looked over to Purity and she was still floating calmly beside me, with all of the light stealth clearly wasn’t ever going to be an option for her.  
  
"Bright-Eyes," I said seriously, and she snapped to attention. "Just like we planned, remember?"  
  
I dropped myself down to the ground next to the door, Purity followed barely a second later and made an aborted grab for my shoulder. No doubt she wanted to know _when_ exactly we had planned anything, and _what_ exactly it entailed.

I kicked the door open and strode in like I owned the place.  
  
"The big booty bitches are here!" I cheered, as we strode into the room.  
  
Purity followed behind me in something approaching shock, her shoulders stuck in a bizarre meld of confidence and embarrassment.

Hilariously, half of the people in the room had jumped up out of their chairs near-instantly, already facing the door where we had come in through. Nobody made a move to attack as I wandered up to stand next to Hookwolf, who had been one of the few people who hadn’t bothered to stand up.

I spotted Coil still sitting at the head of the table gave him a friendly nod.  
  
Coil was sitting extremely still, and just staring at me. Was it shock, awe, or pride? I couldn't tell with his costume in the way, I would just have to assume that it was all of the above. That will teach him for ghosting me.  
  
Kaiser was the first to talk, from his seat opposite Coil, at the other head of the table.  
  
"Purity," Kaiser said calmly. "How nice of you to join us."  
  
Kaiser was covered in a pretty awesome looking set of armor, it was all interlocking metal pieces, and straight lines, it looked intricate as all hell. I wondered if I could make my own amour look as cool as that I would have to spend some more time practicing.  
  
I gave the room a quick once over, the Undersiders were sitting to the side behind Grue, who was seated at the big boy table in the middle of the room. I nodded to Regent, who nodded back, Tattletale, Skitter, and Bitch were all there as well. I almost made a crack about Panacea quitting the team but managed to hold myself back.  
  
Hookwolf was looking up at me curiously, practically sprawled in his chair with Krieg and an unknown man and woman sitting around him. I spotted Victor, Rune, and Othala at another table, and gave them a friendly wave, before turning away.  
  
"I'm not here for you." Purity said calmly, after taking a moment to collect herself. "I'm with Urchin."  
  
Kaiser looked supremely unbothered by his absolute cuckening, which probably meant that he was pissed off. He better not try and put a spike up my ass for stealing his ex-enforcer or I was going to have to whoop him.  
  
"I see," Kaiser replied coolly. "You should work on your entrance."  
  
The second part was directed at me and people started to sit back down after the pleasantries were concluded. Fenja and Menja were both sitting directly behind Kaiser, looking at Purity with looks filled with something, I wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but it looked negative. They both had blonde hair and looked like supermodels, both wore matching armor.  
  
Damn, Kaiser was living his best life.  
  
"Heh, I almost went with, 'Get on the ground!'," I said easily while looking around the room, but Kaiser said nothing in response.  
  
I spotted something interesting in the corner, the three members of the Chorus sat watching us quietly, Aural stood up and waved.  
  
"Aural," I said cheerfully. "How's it hanging?"  
  
Aural lifted her hand and tilted it to the left, drawing a laugh out of me. Swallow grabbed her on the arm, quickly tugging her back down and began whispering furiously into her ear. The table next to them housed a bright orange dude with a thick reptilian tail, a real tall, very rotund pale man. The orange dude was ‘Newter’, and the big guy was ‘Gregor the Snail’. There were a few others sitting with them, but I couldn’t recognize any of them.  
  
"Urchin," Coil said finally. "Please take a seat, we can start now that everyone has arrived."  
  
I wandered over and pulled the chair out that sat across from Faultline and the dude with the top hat, who on closer inspection was also wearing a red mask. Kaiser was sitting next to me on my left, completely calm and looking regal. Someone had knocked a seat over at some point, so I picked it up and set it right again.

Purity sat at the table directly behind me, glowing brilliantly.  
  
Aural wandered over and took the seat next to Faultline, I guess that she was their designated spokesperson, Heh. The seat I put back in place was still empty, it sat between Grue and I. I had another look around and spotted the merchants sitting at the side of the room, Skidmark, Squealer, and Mush, with no Trainwreck to be seen.  
  
I blinked at Skidmark’s expression, he looked furious and Squealer was looking pretty upset as well, the less said about Mush’s appearance the better.  
  
"Hey Skidmark," I said cheerfully, "This is your seat, isn't it? Move your ass buddy, it’s go time."  
  
I motioned him over, and he smiled suddenly, anger abruptly forgotten as he shot up to his feet, he strode over before sitting down next to me with a shit-eating grin on his face. Faultline, Grue, and Kaiser all turned to stare at me in silence, I stared back uncaring.

They were angry for some reason obviously, I frowned at them from behind my mask before realizing that they couldn’t see it.  
  
“You got a fucking problem?” I asked in general, waiting for someone to speak up but there was just a moment of tense silence before Coil drew everyone's attention to him.  
  
“That should be everyone." Coil began coolly, completely ignoring the tension, " It would seem that Lung won’t be coming, though I doubt any of us are surprised, given the subject of tonight’s discussion.”  
  
There were some murmurs of agreement and nods from around the table. I stared at Coil, was the man on drugs? Why the fuck would Lung be coming to the meeting about kicking the shit out of Lung? What a strange way to begin the discussion, he must have had a reason for it, so I didn't call him on it.  
  
"The ABB," Kaiser spoke calmly, pronouncing each letter. "They are causing some property damage."  
  
Kaiser mentioned it like it was a small inconvenience to him, something annoying but not an actual problem yet. Faultline sat forward and drew everyone’s attention to herself. Aural leaned back to watch her.  
  
"The ABB is being reckless." Faultline said firmly, "The increase in law enforcement is becoming an issue and it is a problem for all of us."  
  
"Homeland security and military forces having been setting up blockages all across the city in response to Bakuda's attacks," Coil added evenly. "Even the heroes from neighboring cities are being drawn to Brockton Bay because of their actions."  
  
Coil paused a moment, studying everyone’s reactions before continuing.  
  
"It is making business somewhat, _difficult_." Coil stressed the word. “This meeting is to decide what exactly we should be doing about it.”  
  
Grue joined the discussion then calmly outlining what he and the Undersiders had witnessed during Bakuda's ambush on them. Hundreds of people kidnapped and apparently having bombs surgically implanted in them, forced to follow Bakuda’s orders or be killed gruesomely. Bakuda had even started ordering her captives to go out and find even more people, she was like a one-woman factory at this point. Input people: output unwilling suicide bombers, it made me sick.  
  
Grue handed out a disc to everyone.  
  
"This is a video recording that Uber and Leet took when they ambushed us," Grue said calmly, "They left it behind when they ran, it should be useful to get an idea of how Bakuda fights."  
  
When he got to me, I declined.  
  
"I've already seen it, I'm good thanks," I said easily, before nodding to him.  
  
Grue hesitated for a moment before continuing on to the others, there was a quiet moment where they all fell into thought before Coil spoke again.  
  
“We’re in agreement then," Coil said calmly after Grue had ceded the floor. "The ABB cannot be allowed to continue operating in Brockton Bay.”  
  
Everyone was making noises or gestures of general agreement, the man had actually done it. Coil had brought together this motley assortment of villains and mercenaries under a single banner, I barely restrained myself from clapping, the guy had charisma.  
  
"Very well, then I suggest we establish a temporary truce," Coil said simply. "We refrain from everything that isn't essential to our businesses and we remove the ABB from Brockton Bay."  
  
Faultline immediately spoke up.  
  
"My group won't be getting involved with this unless somebody is paying us. If the person paying is the ABB, then I'll be on the other side of this fight." Faultline said steadily.  
  
I immediately started laughing, not even five minutes ago she had been talking up how big of a threat they were and now she wanted to play it off like she was going to join fucking Lung? Who was going to pay her exactly? The only person here who even used other mercenaries was Coil.  
  
"You just said that they were being reckless, and causing trouble for everyone," I said pointedly, staring straight at her.  
  
Coil leaned back in his chair, watching me curiously. I’ve got your back buddy, I’ll protect your money mountain. Besides, I was going to ask him for a raise now that Purity had joined, it was less likely to happen if Coil was hemorrhaging money to all these other vultures.

Faultline turned to look at me, the blank face of her welder’s mask glinting in the light.

  
"What's your point?" Faultline said darkly as if to dare me to start shit.  
  
Well if you insist, I thought.  
  
"My point is everyone else here has the exact same problem with them." I said easily, "They aren't asking for money, you want _us_ to do the work for free, but _your_ team gets paid? Fuck off."  
  
Faultline leaned forward and started to respond but I cut her off.  
  
"If you want to go join the ABB, go right ahead, I’ll kick your ass as well." I said pleasantly, "No skin off my nose."  
  
Tattletale made a strange noise from her table and Faultline sat back before crossing her arms. Everyone was staring at her now, she had to be feeling the pressure.  
  
"Fine," Faultline said balefully. "Pro bono, we'll help." I could almost feel her glare through the welding helmet.  
  
Coil watched me for a moment longer, no doubt basking in my magnificence, before he re-joined the conversation, getting us all refocused on the task at hand.  
  
"Kaiser?" Coil asked calmly.  
  
"I think that a temporary truce is acceptable," Kaiser answered easily.  
  
Grue spoke up next without waiting to be addressed.  
  
"We were thinking of something similar anyway, count us in," Grue said seriously.  
  
The guy in the top hat joined in a moment later.  
  
"Sure," Top hat said, "Not a problem."  
  
I looked over to Skidmark, but he was staring at the side of Grue’s helmet.  
  
"Skidmark, you guys in?" I asked curiously, to speed things up.  
  
Skidmark turned to me and grinned.  
  
"Fuck yeah, we're in," Skidmark said happily.  
  
I nodded at him.  
  
"Aural?" Coil asked calmly.  
  
Aural nodded in agreement, so I gave her the thumbs up, she immediately stuck out her tongue at me. Cheeky.  
  
Everybody that had turned up was now onboard, Lung was pretty much fucked, Bakuda was also fucked and Oni Lee could probably fuck himself if he were quick about it, the meeting was a smashing success.

We started to wrap things up after that, with everybody swearing their undying fealty to the cause, some had wanted to air some grievances though. Hookwolf had some beef with Bitch.  
  
We ducked out right behind the dude in the top hat, who’s name I never ended up learning, I would have to look that guy up later. I was confident in my own power, but I wasn't sticking around in case any of these assholes had some funny ideas or some really esoteric powers.  
  
Purity followed beside me, the dream team in action. Purity alone was one of the strongest capes in the city, so nobody wanted to fuck with her, that was probably most of the reason they had let me get away with so much shit in there.

I had Purity glowing brightly directly behind me, hard to forget her.  
  
I was well aware of just how strong she was, don't get me wrong. I’ve seen the footage of her other fights and she usually doesn't blow her load as quick as she did during our fight. I had managed through sheer luck to catch her in a moment of critical weakness. Days of bad weather resulting in a lack of light to absorb, compounded by the fact that she had been patrolling for several hours already and had used up a fair amount of her rationed power.  
  
Then I came along, making her use up the dregs of her remaining power to try and punch through my defenses. The fight would have been a much longer and nastier one if I had caught her during the day with the sun out, on the other hand, she probably wouldn’t have fought so desperately if she had more power at her disposal.  
  
I would have had to somehow get her out of the light and then keep her buried in more material then she would be able to destroy, which was probably still doable. The fight had escalated pretty quickly but in my defense, she had started going lethal almost straight out the gates.

It made more sense now than it had at the time, I hadn’t realized I had literally attacked her outside of her home, the entire situation had probably come off as a lot more sinister then I had intended.

In a full lethal fight, no restrictions, I was sure she could kill me just as fast as I could kill her and I'm glad that it hadn't come to that.  
  
I dropped Kayden off at the place we had met, like the well-mannered gentleman I was. I made a wire top-hat like that dude at the meeting and took it off there was even some bowing. Kayden shooed me away, exasperated but smiling.  
  
I told her to contact me if she needed to and then skedaddled, what a day.


	20. Chapter 20

April 25th, 2011, Saturday, 2:28 PM.  
  
It was two days after the meeting when I finally got the call from Coil.  
  
Everybody had been split up into teams and he told me where the rest of our slapdash team was meeting, and the location of our first target. I sent Kayden a message as soon as I got off the phone with Coil, asking her to meet me later on at our usual spot.  
  
When the time for the raid approached we met up before we made our way across the city, doing our best to keep a low profile, which meant no flying for Kayden, at least for now. It took sometimes to work our way there, but eventually we stepped into an alleyway and spotted the members of our temporary team of villains.  
  
One member of the group immediately broke off from her spot on the wall, shuffling over to us while looking like they were in dire need of a shower and probably some new clothes. Squealer came to a stop in front of us, with her hands shoved into the deep pockets of her filthy jeans.  
  
Kayden glanced at me, now glowing brightly, but I just waved her on and she strode off without another word heading towards an unknown woman that was leaning against alleyway wall. Kayden must have known who the woman was because they started talking to each other quietly.  
  
I dragged my attention back to Squealer, curious about what she wanted, was she going to try and beat me up or something?  
  
"Why did you let Skidmark sit at the table at the meeting?" Squealer asked suddenly.  
  
I noted that her voice was pitched quite high, and it distracted me from what she had actually said for a moment. I frowned behind my mask, I hadn't 'let' anyone sit at the table, it’s not like it was my table, or my meeting, besides it was Skidmark’s seat as far as I knew, I just told him to hurry the fuck up. I scratched the back of my head, wondering if I had accidently started some kind of feud with the Merchants.  
  
"Why wouldn't I let him?" I asked confused, while I tried to figure out her angle.  
  
Squealer looked annoyed by my answer as she pulled one hand out of her pocket and jammed it over her shoulder, thumb first. I looked at where she was pointing, slightly to the left of Grue, Gregor the Snail and a couple of armour men.  
  
"They told us to fuck off, before you got there." Squealer said plainly, before stuffing her hand back into her pocket.  
  
I stared at the group in wonder, trying to figure out who she was talking about. Grue, despite being quite rude to his teammates had seemed rather mild mannered at the meeting, so it probably wasn’t him. Did Gregor the Snail have some beef with the Merchants? As far as I knew his power was to produce chemicals in his body, was he cutting in on their drug business? Why would they care what Gregor the Snail told them to do at the meeting?  
  
It made no fucking sense at all, but then again most villains were idiots.  
  
"Gregor the Snail told you to fuck off?" I asked bemused, wondering why it was suddenly my problem. "I would have still told him to sit at the table anyway.  
  
Squealer was looking at me strangely now, which just made me even more confused.  
  
“What does Gregor- the-Fucking-Snail have to do with this?” Squealer said suspiciously, before looking over her shoulder with a paranoid look on her face.  
  
I stared at her in without understanding before I found myself starting to get annoyed, I opened my mouth to tell her to explain what the hell she meant, but she spoke first.  
  
"Why did _you_ want _us_ at the table?" Squealer asked obnoxiously, punctuating each word with a point of her grease-covered finger.  
  
I looked at her incredulously, she was actually kind of annoying. Is this what it felt like for people when they spoke to me?

I stepped forward aggressively to establish dominance and it failed completely because Squealer didn’t even move backwards at all. Now I was stuck standing awkwardly close to her, and she smelled absolutely awful. I considered abducting her for a quick bath into the ocean, before realizing what a terrible idea that would be.  
  
Seriously, fuck the ocean.  
  
"Skidmark is the leader of a gang,” I said slowly as if she was a child. "At a meeting for the gang leaders to talk to each other."  
  
I expected her to accept that, but somehow she _still_ wasn't satisfied, in fact, she looked confused now as well. Usually, I would love to shoot the shit with someone, but Squealer smelled seriously bad, and it was almost enough for me to overcome my fear of the ocean, I felt my stomach twist at the thought, almost.  
  
"Yeah, but none of them think of us as equals in there." Squealer said annoyed, staring up at my mask. "They treat us like shit because you know."  
  
Squealer jerked her head to the side as if I might somehow understand, but I absolutely didn’t know.

I didn't really keep up with any of the gang fightings. I was above all that crap, all I knew was that if anyone brought their fighting near my apartment I was going to start kicking everybody’s ass. So far nobody had tried anything, well nobody since String Theory anyway.  
  
Fuck, I flinched at the thought that managed to sneak below my guard before I shook my head and plastered a shit-eating grin on my face, immediately falling back into old habits to bury the pain.  
  
"Don't worry, Sweetheart," I said lecherously, leering at her through my mask. "Nobody at that table was my equal."  
  
I puffed my chest out and strolled off like I was top shit.  
  
“Get fucked, idiot.” Squealer laughed, before following after me.  
  
Grue was still talking with Gregor the Snail and the two armored men, which were probably Coil's men. Aural and an albino dude that I have never seen before had joined their huddle now. Squealer caught up to me and was walking beside me as I approached the group. Purity was still talking to the other woman against the wall, but when I was level with the two of them, they peeled themselves off the wall and fell in step beside me.  
  
We strode up to the main group with all of us walking in a line, looking like the bargain bin Avengers. The two armored men noticed our approach before they turned to partially face us, no doubt having read the same comic and struggling not to piss their pants.  
  
"Squealer, Urchin, Purity, Night," Grue said calmly, darkness flaring around his helmet. "Any problems?"  
  
Well, that explained who the unknown woman was. Coil had been the once to choose the team leaders for all of the other teams, and for whatever reason, everybody had listened to him. Although Kaiser had immediately proclaimed himself the leader of ‘Team 1’, but there seemed to be some dissent in the ranks over his leadership.  
  
Faultline was the leader of ‘Team 2’, Grue was the assigned leader for our lovely little ‘Team 3’ while Hookwolf was the leader of Team 4. I wondered if this many villains had ever worked together outside of Endbringer attacks before, it was actually pretty cool.  
  
"Nah," I said cheerfully. "Where do you want us, buddy?"  
  
Grue relaxed a bit after that, I wondered if he thought I would try and contest his leadership? I wasn't that much of a dick, as long as the plan wasn't terrible I was content with following along. Purity turned towards me and seemed to hesitate, I looked down at her curiously but after a moment she just turned back to Grue and nodded without comment.

I noticed that the all-white guy was watching her quietly with a frown on his face.  
  
Grue motioned everybody towards him and we all had a little huddle, the teamwork almost brought a tear to my eye.  
  
"Our target is a warehouse two streets that way," Grue said calmly, pointing in the direction. "We don't know who is there, or what they are storing inside, just that it is one of the ABB's storehouses."  
  
I had a look in the direction he was pointing, but there was a bunch of buildings in the way. I glanced up at the rooftop of the building in front of us before one of the soldiers spoke up. The man was almost as tall as me, which was pretty cool, however, he didn’t look like a stick figure, he had at least forty kilograms on me, he was an absolute mountain of muscle. The guy was covered head to toe in dark blue military gear, with a full helmet, a face mask, an armored vest with covered in pockets and a strange-looking rifle slung over his shoulder.  
  
I immediately nicknamed him Tallboy in my head.  
  
"The warehouse has three entrances, with two guys at each; carrying knives, and machete's but no guns visible." Tallboy rattled off calmly, "Plenty of windows, second story and above, they will see us coming from this side, the bottom floor has no windows at all."  
  
The other soldier picked up where he left off, and I took a moment to study him as well. He was dressed much the same as Tallboy but was nowhere near as tall, he was, however, _extremely_ stocky, like someone had dragged the wide slider all the way to max during character customization, he had a fire ax resting on his shoulder and a shotgun strapped in a holster on his leg.  
  
I dubbed him Wideboy.  
  
"Two Asian women at the corner of the next street; working girls, probably doubling as lookouts for the warehouse." Wideboy said cheerfully, "I suspect that if we came in from another direction, we'd run into more of them there as well."  
  
Everyone mulled over the information for a bit, before Grue spoke up.  
  
"We aren't going to bother with stealth, but we will be going non-lethal," Grue said firmly, making sure to meet everyone’s eyes. "Here's what we’re going to do."  
  
Grue laid out the plan quickly and concisely, he definitely knew what he was doing, obviously having had some experience with planning out an offensive prior. It made me wonder who had come up with the stupid ‘rob the bank in broad daylight while right down the road from the Wards HQ’ plan.  
  
It must have been one of the others that had thought up that little shit-show.  
  
I wandered away from the group when Grue finished giving us our orders and prepared myself for the mission. Not that there was much to prepare though, so I smashed out some quick stretches and a couple of squats. I windmilled my arms like I was fighting a ten-year-old in glorious hand-to-hand combat, trying to loosen up my shoulders. We would be pairing up apparently, Grue would be working alongside Night, the formerly-but-recently-re-recruited member of the Empire Eighty-Eight. I wasn’t certain but I thought that Kayden might be trying to yoink her from Kaiser, I would have to ask her later.  
  
While I hadn’t known who she was on sight alone, I had heard of Night before, and she had a very strange power. A conditional monster form, as long as no one was observing her, she could instantly turn into some crazy Cthulhu-looking-motherfucker.  
  
My respect for Grue’s competence jumped up again, he was clearly trying to work some power synergy into the pairings. Grue's darkness, combined with Night's own tentacle-hentai form seemed as if they were almost made for each other, honestly, the two of them could probably solo anything short of Lung himself on their own.  
  
The all-white guy was apparently called Alabaster, and also a part of the Empire, he was something approaching immortal, he would passively reset back to perfect health every 3 seconds, but apart from that, he was just a normal guy, albeit massively racist. Alabaster would be going in with Gregor the Snail, whose power was to create a variety of chemicals in his body and then shoot them at things, they would make a good team as Alabaster was essentially free to move through the big guy's attacks with impunity.  
  
Purity would be working with Aural, which didn't really have any power synergy that I could see. Purity blew shit up with her kinetic light blasts while Aural was just an unstoppable, untouchable melee beast. Oh, I saw it now, it was a range/melee team.  
  
I watched Grue for a minute, wondering if he played any video games.  
  
The two soldiers were here as Coil's contribution to the war effort and would be acting out his orders via ear-piece radio’s. I was kind of annoyed that Coil didn't actually have to be here in person, I was kind of looking forward to hanging out with the dude, I guess he wasn't much of a fighter. I ended up spending a few minutes wondering what Coil’s power was, and I came no closer to answering the question this time than I had the other million times.  
  
He was a Thinker of some sort, but that was all I knew.  
  
The way the teams had been split left me dealing with Squealer, and that bath in the ocean was looking more appealing by the second. I was on stuck on babysitting duty I guess, Squealer was a tinker, with a specialization on making vehicles. Squealers own neurosis lent her to creating big ass ugly things, like her big ass truck that she couldn’t bring with her, not without alerting everyone in the god damned city to our location. Besides, most of the streets had roadblocks set up, which meant she had pretty much fuck-all combat potential for the mission.  
  
I eyed her for a moment in thought, I wonder if she could make me a hover-board like Kid Wins? Or a pair of motorized rollerblades like that one anime? I slapped my fist down into my palm, getting excited by the idea. I could be zooming up fucking walls and shit, it would be _amazing_. I stared at her intently, wondering how I could get her to make me something.  
  
I wonder if she would take money, or if I would have to threaten to beat the merchants up.  
  
I ran that thought over in my head for a moment, I was already stealing members from the other gangs, I _could_ always poach her from the Merchants. I imagined a scale in my mind; with my super-powerful rollerblades on one side and the Merchants on the other. Squealer noticed me watching her and stared back in silent challenge.

I nodded in decision as the rollerblades won out.

  
“What?” Squealer demanded after I kept on staring.  
  
"Do you have like, a gun or a taser or something?" I asked curiously, not giving the game away.  
  
Surprisingly enough, she nodded.  
  
"Yeah, I made a taser before I rocked up." Squealer said happily before she pulled it out of her filthy pants pocket.  
  
A small black cylinder, prongs at the end with a surprisingly clean and stylish design.  
  
"Looks pretty snazzy, I thought all your stuff looked like shit," I said thoughtfully.  
  
Squealer crossed her arms and blew a breath out of her nose.  
  
"My _stuff_ doesn't look like shit, asshole." Squealer said annoyed. "I didn't have the time to make this look better."  
  
I stared at her without comprehension, didn’t have time to make it look _better_? Did Squealer have rocks in her head? It looked fine the way it was, anything she did to it now would ruin it entirely.  
  
"You make everything look like shit on purpose?" I said bemused. "Are you retarded?"  
  
Squealer waved the taser in my direction threateningly, and I moved back out of range with a startled laugh.  
  
"It doesn't look like shit," Squealer defended furiously, "Dickhead!"  
  
"No, you," I said obnoxiously, before poking my tongue out at her.  
  
I spun on my heel, heading further into the alleyway, Squealer stomped after me muttering under her breath.

I took the long way onto the roof, trying to think about how to best convince her to do my bidding. I had to yank hard on the fire escape ladder in order to get it to unfurl, but I managed, and Squealer followed me up to the roof without issue. I stuck a finger under my mask and scratched my chin as I walked over to the edge of the roof. I had a look around and quickly spotted the warehouse, we would have to cross another street to get to it, it wasn’t really an obstacle with my power. Squealer stepped up beside me and I shuffled out of her tasers reach, just in case.  
  
I nodded to myself as I figured out a workable plan and turned to face Squealer.  
  
"Make me a hoverboard," I demanded.  
  
Squealer turned to face me eyebrows narrowed together in annoyance.  
  
"Why would I make you _anything_ , dickhead?" Squealer said mockingly.  
  
I frowned, my plan hadn’t covered this impossible turn of events, the negotiations seemed to have taken a turn for the worst.  
  
"Because I asked you too!" I said obviously.  
  
I was already dreaming of boosting around the city like a maniac. Squealer huffed before stuffing her hands back into her pockets, her expression was a mixture of annoyance and amusement, I spoke before she could respond.  
  
"When you make it, don't make it look shit." I insisted quickly. "Make it look cool like the taser, you know?"  
  
Squealer's amusement quickly turned to fury and she took an aggressive step forward. She yanked the taser out of her pocket and took a swipe at me with it that I had to hop back to avoid.  
  
"Fuck you!” Squealer snarled, “How about I make you a taser and then shove it up your fucking ass!"  
  
"I bet you don't even know how to _make_ a hoverboard!" I taunted, doing my best to add fuel to the dumpster fire that was her temper. "You're just scared!"  
  
Squealer scowled at me.  
  
"Which is it dickhead? I'm scared or I don't know how to make it?" Squealer said nastily, ripping my argument apart without mercy. "I'm not falling for that crap!"  
  
Shit. My arguments were being defeated by a druggie, I was better than this dammit! I would have to step up my game and hit her with something really special.  
  
"Make me a hoverboard or I’ll kick your ass!" I said triumphantly, "How about _that_ you fuck-knuckle!"  
  
Squealer tried to punch me in the face with her other hand, but I ducked backward away from it. I started making aggressive Kung-Fu poses at her from a few feet away, but she wasn't intimidated at all, not even when I added sound effects.  
  
"You're the fuck-knuckle!" Squealer howled angrily, "You fuck-knuckle!"  
  
I gaped at her, unable to believe she would just steal my word.  
  
“Good job!” I said mockingly, “You took my joke and said it back to me!”  
  
Squealer made an incoherent noise of frustration and swung the taser at me again. I snatched up her forearm with a wire and then quickly disarmed her. Squealer backed up in a panic as I started to jab the taser at her like it was a spear, she tried to leap back out of my range but tripped on the edge of the roof instead.  
  
I had to catch her with more wires before she fell off entirely  
  
"Nice one, idiot!" I laughed.  
  
Squealer thrashed in rage for a moment before she abruptly gave up, and then she gave me the finger. How childish.  
  
I started to say something, but my phone suddenly dinged, it was time to go. I dropped off the roof immediately and brought Squealer with me, catching us both in the air before flashing over the street to the top of the next building. We passed over it and then dove straight down to the ground on the other side. Squealer's name suddenly made a lot of sense, I put us both gently on the ground and retracted the wires keeping her tied up. I tossed her back the taser and Squealer looked angry when she took it, but she didn’t make any move to attack.  
  
I strode forward towards the warehouse, ready to begin.  
  
"Hey! Why are we just walking straight up!" Squealer said worriedly but kept following after me. "What if they have guns or some-shit!"  
  
I tilted my head at her tone of voice, I guess guns could be pretty scary when you didn’t have superpowers related to actual combat, I could understand where she was coming from.  
  
"Imagine being scared by a gun." I teased, instead. "You call yourself a villain, Squealer. Maybe you should go get a job in retail instead."  
  
Squealers unease vanished and her face turned furious once more, she was scared anymore at least, so I considered it a job well done. I made sure to stay out of her range though, just in case she did try and zap me. I had sent a bunch of microwires ahead of us and they came down around the guards that were blocking our entrance to the warehouse.  
  
The two men spotted us, one immediately pulled out a knife just as my wires suddenly grew thick, multiplying a thousand-fold around them. I tied them up and left them on the ground by the door, I kind of felt bad for them, but life was unfair.  
  
Squealer rushed forward to zap one of the guys with her taser and I had to break my connection to the wire to avoid getting shocked as well  
  
"I'm shocked," I said sadly, “Truly shocked that you would do this to me."  
  
Squealer just huffed before leaning down and zapping the other guy as well. The sound of gunfire and shouting came from the other side of the building, which was a decent indicator that everyone else had started the assault. I snuck a bunch of wires underneath the door and more into the gaps around the sides before tearing it clean out of the wall.  
  
I sent the door through the opening ahead of me before stepping over the guys on the ground and over the threshold. A guy to the left of the door immediately tried to stab me in the face so I whacked him in the face with the door, he fell back onto his ass and I pinned him to the ground with the door, he thrashed around in panic as Squealer ran over to zap him too.  
  
It was absolute chaos inside the warehouse, gang-members were running away from a spreading cloud of darkness that was slowly rolling across the width of the building. I could see a patch of the wall across from us sizzling and melting, Alabaster and Gregor the Snail stepped through the new hole a moment later. I turned my attention back to the guy that was coming at us from the right, idly tripping him over, Squealer bent down dutifully to give him a zap.  
  
I frowned in thought.  
  
"Hey, that's not lethal right?" I asked seriously.  
  
"Of course it isn’t, I don’t want to kill anyone!" Squealer said defensively, looking rather upset at the accusation.  
  
"Sorry, sorry," I said honestly, as I snatched up another guy that was running across the scaffolding above us.  
  
I dropped him next to her and Squealer poked him obligingly, accepting the apology.

I looked around the room, vaguely disappointed. This kind of sucked, it was just a bunch of normies, and they were all getting destroyed easily. There was no Lung, Bakuda, or Oni Lee in sight, hell I would have settled for a crack at Uber and Leet. I wonder if any of the other teams had done any better.  
  
I tripped a guy who was trying to get out of the darkness, and the dude screamed as he desperately crawled away from it, he looked back in horror as the cloud covered one of his legs, and then he was suddenly yanked back into it.  
  
Yikes, I started moving away from the cloud, Night was fucking scary.  
  
I spotted Aural and Purity eventually. Purity had been blowing up the upper floors and terrorizing everyone inside, forcing them to go down into the bottom floor to get away from her, and I could see her brightly glowing form lighting up the stairwell.  
  
Aural walked down the stairs casually stepping under a guy’s machete swing with ease, she reached down and stabbed him in the foot, causing the guy to immediately dropped his weapon in pain. Aural took another two steps past him as another guy suddenly pulled out a gun and shot at her three times.  
  
Aural moved suddenly slicing the air in front of her three times with blurring speed and sparks flashed in the air as she deflected them away from her. I had reacted as soon I saw the gun and lashed a wire around the man’s arm before snapping it ruthlessly, the gun dropped from his hand with a shout of pain.  
  
Aural smiled down at us pleasantly before she continued on unhindered, I stared after her with my heart racing in my chest, that was both the coolest and scariest thing I had ever seen. I turned to Squealer to see her reaction, but she wasn't even looking in that direction.

I swallowed and tried to tamp down on the adrenaline that spiked through me at the sight of the gun.  
  
The last remaining gang-member up on the catwalk took off running away from Aural yelling at the top of his lungs, the man reached the railing and leaped straight off before landing on the ground with a crunch. The man’s yelling cut off a few moments later when Squealer walked over and zapped him.  
  
All the gang members had been subdued, there were no hostages, no bombs, and no capes, how disappointing, I had barely got to do anything at all. Grue strode out of his cloud of darkness before tasking everybody with dragging all of the unconscious people into a pile and securing them.  
  
Once they were tied up we searched through the warehouse for any valuables, there were a bunch of crates on Gregor's side of the warehouse, all nailed shut. I tore a lid off one and had a look inside, it was filled with clear plastic bags the contents of the bags were all green. I didn't know fuck all about drugs, but this was probably weed. I cracked open a few more crates, but they were all the same.  
  
"We get to keep this right?" Squealer asked with wide eyes.  
  
I shrugged, if she staked a claim on some, I doubt anybody would fight her too hard over it.  
  
"I would guess we are splitting whatever we find with everyone here," I said uncaring.  
  
I had never used drugs before and I had never really felt like trying. I would probably just give my portion to Kayden or something, she might be able to sell it.  
  
Wait a fucking minute.  
  
"I'll give you my share if you make me a hoverboard!" I declared victoriously. "or a pair fucking motorized roller-blades like that one anime!"  
  
Squealer hesitated for a moment, looking very torn.  
  
"I’ll even go find anything you need to make them." I offered, trying to sweeten the deal.  
  
Squealer still held her silence.

What the hell man? Why was she so against making me something, it was pissing me off, to be honest, she clearly wanted my share of the loot so why couldn’t she? Maybe she couldn't make it after all?  
  
“No.” Squealer said finally, before turning away.  
  
"Are you kidding me?" I said annoyed, "Why the hell not?"  
  
I never got to hear her response, because Grue strode over to take a look in the crate.  
  
"That is a _lot_ of weed," Grue said surprised, before calling everyone over.  
  
The others started to reappear, bringing whatever valuables they had found, and our pile of stolen loot slowly grew higher.  
  
"How are we going to split it?" Alabaster said seriously.  
  
We debated it for a while, discussing who wanted what and how it could be divided to allow everyone a roughly equal share, no one was really happy in the end, but nobody felt slighted either. Everyone got something, including the two soldiers, Squealer got the two crates of drugs that she wanted, I also picked two up, I was going to keep on trying to bribe her. Purity took another crate along with some of the cash, I didn't bother tracking what everyone else got. I offered to help ferry people’s hordes wherever they wanted, but surprisingly nobody wanted my help.  
  
Ungrateful bastards.  
  
Once we had all the loot out and ready for transport, we called in the warehouse's location to the authorities so they could come to clean up after us. We told them we had taken down an ABB base and to come to arrest all the asshole's tied up inside before we high tailed it out of there before the police arrived.


	21. Chapter 21

May 4th, 2011, Wednesday, 9:07 AM.  
  
The last week had been a busy one, our villain team had hit multiple targets, none of which were anywhere near as large as the warehouse had been. Lung had been taken down by team one, but almost immediately after he had been taken into custody he had managed to escape again, on the _same_ god damned day, it was ridiculous.  
  
Oni lee had been wounded during the same battle, apparently shot in the leg by one of Coil's men. The teleporter had fled the area before anyone could stop him and I was thinking about trying to track him down, just to make sure he didn't break all of them fucking free again.  
  
Team one had more or less been completely destroyed, but they had managed to squeak out a win in the end, a pyrrhic victory I think it was called. Bug-girl, Bitch, and a cape called Labyrinth had managed to get out mostly unscathed, everyone else was in various states of injure or dead. There was a rumor going around that the crazy Bug-girl had cut out Lung's eyes.  
  
Cut out his _eyes_ man. Fuck.  
  
I had tried to warn Lung the first time I met him, I hope the guy got his dick back at least, I was once again reminded that if I ever had to go up against that chick I would be taking absolutely no chances. She had somehow managed to take down fucking Lung of all people, _twice_. I wasn't going to underestimate her, I couldn't grow my eyes back after all.  
  
Kaiser had gotten messed up during the fight and had to be carried away from the battle unconscious while Menja had been stabbed in the stomach by Lung. Both of them were apparently critically injured, although with Othala on their team they would be fine in a couple of hours at most.  
  
Newter had been sliced nearly in half but had managed to walk away from the battle in good spirits, with some help from his teammate. There were two of Coil's guys on that team as well, one of which had fallen off a building and broken his leg.  
  
Skidmark had almost his entire left side burned badly, he was able to walk away from the battle unaided, but he would be hurting until the Merchants could find a healer that would treat him.  
  
Mush had been killed.  
  
Lung had gone straight through his trash armor and burnt him alive, all the more fuel for his fire. it sounded like a horrifying way to die, I had never spoken to the guy before, so I didn't have an emotional connection to him, which somehow made me feel guilty that I didn't feel bad at all.  
  
Bakuda had managed to flee from one of her workshops, the one that team two had raided, there were no outstanding injuries of note and they had taken all of the normies out with relative ease.  
  
I was kind of pissed off, team three, my team, had not gotten into a single cape fight during any the raids, it had just been normies with guns and knives. Most of them had started to run away at the first sign of trouble after we systematically conquered their bases one by one. We had gotten some stacks of cash and even more drugs out of it though.  
  
I had spent the last few days preparing to take another crack at getting Squealer to make me something cool, I now had a total of seven crates of varying drugs, and a shit load of other random stuff that I could use to bargain with. If she refused to make me anything this time, I was seriously considering just kicking the Merchants asses and then forcing them too. The only thing holding me back was that Mush had died pretty recently, and I knew how that felt.  
  
The news was currently showing clips of Vista and Clockblocker talking with a rather attractive reporter. Despite everything we had done in the last couple of weeks, the Wards were actually the heroes of the hour, and for good reason. The Wards had come in hot, taking both Lung _and_ Bakuda into custody about two hours ago. I was honestly surprised that it had been the Wards that had done it, and not the protectorate that had gotten them. I didn't even think they were allowed to go after dangerous capes willy-nilly.

Hopefully, this time Lung and Bakuda would remain captured because I was getting sick of their shit, to be honest.  
  
The Wards had even managed to stop a big-ass bomb from killing us all as well, the final fuck you from Bakuda. It had supposedly been powerful enough to crack the entire city like an egg, they had saved all of our lives, and we didn't even know that we had needed saving. There was a fundraiser being prepared, hosted by the PRT to hand out awards to the heroes who had participated in taking them down, it was taking place sometime tomorrow.  
  
I would make sure to thank the Wards next time we ran into each other, one good turn deserves another.

* * *

May 5th, 2011, Thursday, 11:37 AM.  
  
There was a breaking news report taking over all of the local news stations, apparently Medhall a medical company had been bombed a couple of hours ago. A bunch of Empire capes had immediately shown up in the aftermath to fight off an unknown group of people that had perpetrated the bombing. There was gunfire, explosions, and a bunch of shenanigans going on.  
  
I swear to god if Lung and Bakuda had managed to break out again I was going to lose it, I was distracted when my phone suddenly started ringing.  
  
"Hello?" I said curiously.  
  
"Urchin," Coil's cool voice came over the line. "I have another job for you."  
  
I shot up from the couch in excitement. Had Lung actually broken free again? Did another millionaire need me to find his lost watch? Was there a tragic Nigerian Prince that needed my help to receive his inheritance?!

The suspense was killing me.  
  
"Sure," I said with forced calm. "What have you got for me?"  
  
"The Merchants have been making nuisances of themselves in the docks," Coil said calmly. "I would like you to get rid of them."  
  
Get rid of them, huh? The truce certainly hadn't lasted for awfully long, a single day after they had been caught and everybody was already at each other's throats. What did he want me to do exactly, I certainly wasn't going to kill them?  
  
"Get rid of them how?" I asked seriously.  
  
"I am _well_ aware of your non-lethal policy, Urchin." Coil chastised. "Hand them over to the PRT or one of the hero teams, as long as they are no longer around, I will consider the job complete."  
  
I felt a bit guilty for doubting him, the job sounded easy enough, it looks like I was going to be squaring my debt with the Wards earlier than expected and pushing my Squealer recruitment pitch up the timetable.  
  
"Alright, it's just Skidmark, Squealer, and Trainwreck right?" I asked for clarification. "Or do you want me to get all the normies too."  
  
Coil paused for a moment before speaking.  
  
"Trainwreck was a double agent." Coil said evenly, his tone measured. "I called him back to base yesterday."  
  
I blinked, trying to wrap my head around that for a second.

Coil was a fucking badass sometimes, I kept forgetting but the dude seemingly had a plan for everything, I tried to think back to when Trainwreck had joined the Merchants. It had to have been over a year ago now? That was some insane long-term planning, who else was secretly working for the guy? Coil's power _had_ to be some type of Thinker ability, something to do with planning? Like that guy from Boston, what's his name, the guy named after those squishy hand piano things.

I wonder if he had any plans about me, setup for years down the track.  
  
I felt a sudden uneasy feeling creep up on me.  
  
"Skidmark and Squealer are all that remain of the Merchants." Coil explained, "Do not be overly concerned with the unpowered members, they will quickly fall apart without leadership, you may handle them as you wish, but they will be dealt with in time."  
  
This didn't sound like an exceedingly difficult job, at the risk of sounding arrogant neither Skidmark nor Squealer really stood a chance against me, I scratched the back of my head, feeling a bit guilty because of Mush. I wonder if Coil would be pissed off at me for recruiting Squealer, he did say as long as they were 'no longer around.'  
  
Did that count? Fuck it.  
  
"Hey Coil, mind if I recruit Squealer?" I asked curiously, the worst-case scenario was that he told me to fuck off.  
  
Coil paused for a long moment, as he always did when I asked something that he wasn't prepared for.  
  
"I see no issue with that." Coil said bemused. "I would prefer if this job was completed within the next three days."  
  
"I'll have it done by this afternoon," I promised, before hanging up.  
  
I finally got to hang up on _him_ , revenge tasted glorious.  
  
I was headed for the rooftop.

* * *

May 5th, 2011, Thursday, 1:49 PM.  
  
Kayden had met me halfway, with her white bodysuit hidden underneath her street clothes, a simple combination of a hoody and jeans. I was also dressed in plain clothes, only my costume was stashed inside a duffel bag that was slung over my back. We had been walking around the Merchants part of town and keeping an eye out for anyone selling on the streets.  
  
"What made you decide to go after them today?" Kayden asked quietly.  
  
If we ever managed to find one of these assholes we would need to duck into an alleyway to change clothes, I hadn't really explained much to her yet, I suppose saying that we were going to go kick druggie asses was pretty vague, I had better clarify.  
  
"Someone hired me to do it," I said honestly.  
  
Kayden studied me quietly for a moment before nodding.  
  
"That's why you came after me as well, isn't it?" Kayden asked easily, and I nodded.  
  
"It was another job, but I messed up." I admitted, "I was only supposed to get in contact with you apparently, I thought I was supposed to recruit you."  
  
I shrugged at her, it was an easy mistake to make, honest.  
  
"You are such an idiot," Kayden said in disbelief.  
  
"That is _no_ way to speak to your boss, missy," I said snootily.  
  
"What is our actual goal today, boss?" Kayden said wryly.  
  
I preened at her words, nobody had ever called me boss before!  
  
"Scatter the Merchants essentially, which won't be awfully hard. Mush is dead, Trainwreck quit the team yesterday." I rattled off, "Skidmark should still be injured from the battle against Lung."  
  
Kayden hummed thoughtfully and we fell into a silence for a while. Barely a minute later we came across some shifty looking dudes hanging around another guy who was sitting in a car. One of them had his head at the window, chatting with the guy inside. We ducked into the closest alleyway that was out of sight and Kayden spoke up after a moment.  
  
"You didn't say anything about Squealer," Kayden said pointedly.  
  
I watched as she pulled her jeans off and then started work on her hoody, I was abruptly reminded of a similar scene from years ago, with Belle. My eyes stung at the memories and I jerked my head to the side to squash the feeling, it only partially worked.

Kayden was watching intently with a strange look in her eyes.  
  
"We are going to recruit her for the Full Frontals," I said with forced calm, staring hard at the brick directly in front of me. "I want someone on the team to make proper armor, and between the two of us I think we can curb any of her bad habits."  
  
Kayden remained silent and I slowly managed to regain my composure and began stripping off my street clothes, I noted idly that Kayden didn't bother turning around, the total perv.  
  
"I see," Kayden said quietly, "Are we actively looking for more recruits?"  
  
I wondered about that for a bit, what was the end goal here? I hadn't actually sought to make a team again, it had just kind of happened on a whim. It was my responsibility now though, so I couldn't just avoid it, but I don't think I should just make a snap decision about it either though.  
  
"Good question, I actually haven't thought about it." I admitted quietly, "We should sit down and discuss what we want out of this team sometime soon. I'm not against making it even bigger though if that is what you want."  
  
Kayden looked pretty happy with that, for whatever reason, I wondered if she was used to being in a leadership position? Was she chafing under my iron rule? I finished putting my costume on and cracked my neck.  
  
"Did you make a lot of the decisions when you were in the Empire?" I asked curiously.  
  
Kayden turned and looked out of the alleyway for a moment before turning back.  
  
"Not often," Kayden said evenly, "Kaiser liked to be the one in control."  
  
"How diplomatic of you," I said dryly, before starting down the alleyway.  
  
Purity snorted at the comment before falling in step beside me, as we reached the mouth of the alleyway she abruptly started shining brightly.

I sent a multitude of wires underneath the car, looping around the wheels before lifting it an inch of the ground. One of the guys noticed us and tapped his friend on the shoulder, who looked pretty worried at our appearance.  
  
The car abruptly tried to speed off with a roar of the engine, only it didn't move an inch and the tired just spun fruitlessly above the ground. The guys all jumped away from it thinking they were about to be run over. I strode up to them and then hopped up onto the front of the car before taking a seat.  
  
"Alright, you all know who I am-" I said pleasantly, but I was immediately cut off.  
  
The guy in the car started beeping his horn furiously, I turned to look at him, but he didn't stop. I generated a wire hand before slapping him across the face with it. He stopped hitting the horn and began trying to wrestle with the hand, I made another hand and let him go at it, hopefully, he would tire himself out.  
  
"I don't know who you are, sorry." A rather short guy said, strangely polite.  
  
I made a noise of disbelief, before pointing at myself and back to him several times. Polite Guy shrugged apologetically. What the hell?  
  
"How about her?" I demanded, pointing at Kayden.  
  
Kayden glowed brighter for a moment.  
  
"Yeah, that's Purity." Polite Guy answered, looking worried.  
  
I couldn't believe this.  
  
"This is _such_ bullshit, I have been kicking asses in this city for _years_! Come on man!" I pleaded.  
  
"Sorry, man." Polite Guy said politely.  
  
 _Fuck._  
  
"Fine," I said sullenly, "Forget it, the point is I'm going to kick the shit out of all of you unless you take me to the Merchants."  
  
They shuffled around for a bit, sneaking glances at each other, and looking worried.  
  
"I'll let you guys go afterward, don't worry," I said honestly.  
  
Polite Guy looked at the other two and waved them off before nodding at us.  
  
"Sure," Polite Guy said carefully, "Follow me, please."

* * *

May 5th, 2011, Thursday, 1:59 PM.  
  
Five minutes later we were standing out the front of a dilapidated warehouse, there was a smaller building attached to the side of it, the warehouse itself had a massive pull-down door on the far side. I sent Polite Guy on his way and he disappeared quickly around the corner.  
  
"Should we knock?" Purity asked wryly.  
  
I looked at the door to the building and shrugged, Kayden must have taken that as a yes, because she blew the fucking door up a moment later. I barely managed to not jump from the suddenness of the action. I gave her the evil eye from behind my mask, but she couldn't see it, so the effect was kind of ruined. I could hear yelling coming from deep inside the building, mostly from the warehouse. Some people started rushing outside to see what had happened, so I ganked them with wires and put them across the street.  
  
The massive warehouse door started to rise quickly and once it was fully open a massive monster-truck-thing came tearing out of the warehouse. It had thick rusted metal sheeting bolted over it all, and other bits of spiked metal covered the sides. It looked like absolute shit, I _cannot_ believe she did this on purpose, I mean it looked pretty dangerous with all the rusted metal, but still. There was even a large mounted chain-gun on the back of it and Skidmark was trying to angle it down towards us.  
  
I didn't give him a chance, I lifted the back wheels of the ground and wrapped another cable around the turret, forcing it up into the air. Skidmark immediately starting shooting the shit out of the sky above, and the noise was one of the loudest things I have ever heard, an unending stream of bullets. The front wheels started smoking as the care fought to move forward, now aimed directly at us. Squealer was sitting in the front seat looking at us in shock.  
  
I waved to her before ripping the turret from its mounting, I lifted it up high into the air and Kayden blew it out of the sky with a blinding blast of light. I yanked Skidmark off the back of the truck before flipping the truck onto its roof, he was screaming threats the entire time. I shook the car until Squealer fell out of the side window and landed on the concrete with a shout of pain.  
  
The wires on Skidmark abruptly starting flying off towards the warehouse despite my control, Skidmark was dragged along for the ride and ended up smacking face-first into the wall. His screaming immediately stopped, so I guessed that he was unconscious?

I lifted the truck high into the air and Squealer stared up at it in horror.  
  
"Squealer, I'm disbanding the Merchants," I said apologetically.  
  
"You can't disband a gang you _aren't_ in you fucking idiot!" Squealer shouted furiously.  
  
Heh, she was mightily pissed off, while I was admiring the sheer anger radiating off her I noticed that she had a large cut on her arm, and her face was covered in bruises. I frowned thoughtfully, I hadn't done that; not unless she was prone to bruising literally within seconds.

Guess she had been in another fight or something recently.  
  
"Squealer, congratulation on joining our team!" I said cheerfully, before clapping loudly.  
  
I looked over at Kayden and she sighed in resignation before clapping a couple of times.

Squealer looked like she was about to explode at this point, so I tried to really sell it to her. I smashed the truck into the ground a couple of meters away from her before lifting it up again and then smashed it down another two times. Squealer covered her head with her hands as parts of the truck broke off, and it started to deform from the force.  
  
"What do you say? Ready to join the best team in Brockton Bay?" I said happily. "The benefits include not getting handed over to the Wards to spend the next thirty years in prison."  
  
I looked at Kayden again, this time she joined in without more prompting.  
  
"Wow! That's an _incredible_ deal, Squealer!" Kayden said loudly, with about zero enthusiasm.  
  
Squealer ripped her taser out of her pocket and I slapped it out of her hand. I shook my finger at her like she was being naughty, and she made a sound of incredible frustration.  
  
This wasn't working. I sighed before lifting the truck up high into the air again.  
  
"Look, you can either spend the rest of your life in prison." I said quietly; serious for the first time. "or you can continue to live your life as a successful, badass, and rich Tinker on the strongest team in Brockton Bay."  
  
I motioned to Kayden and she cored the truck with a blinding flash of light, a tunnel of metal had been carved right through the middle of it, now only connected by a few resilient strips of metal, I snapped it into two pieces before dropping it on either side of Squealer.  
  
The remains of the truck smashed into the ground with the sound of tortured metal, and I strode over to Squealer.  
  
"Last chance," I said honestly.  
  
Squealer glanced over to where I had Skidmark tied up for a long moment.  
  
"Okay." Squealer said finally. "I'll join."  
  
Kayden held out a hand to her and Squealer looked at both of us before reaching out and taking it. Purity pulled her up to her feet and I clapped her on the shoulder.  
  
"Good choice." I said cheerfully, "Come on then, let's go drop Skidmark off and get on with our lives."  
  
I lifted every single merchant into the air and pulled Skidmark over towards us as well. I made a platform for Squealer to stand on, giving her the royal treatment as the newest member of the Full Frontals. Purity followed us up into the air, and we left the Merchants base behind us.  
  
"Are we really going to the Wards?" Kayden asked quietly, as she pulled up beside me.  
  
"Yeah." I laughed, "I owe them one, so this should clear that debt up."  
  
Kayden just shook her brightly glowing head, Squealer was gripping the platform tightly and looking down at the city with wide eyes. We made our way slowly downtown heading towards where the PRT building was located, along with the Wards HQ that was hidden somewhere inside. As we approached I noticed that there was a hive of activity going on, someone had called ahead about us, I guessed, we weren't exactly being stealthy.  
  
As we came down to street level we found the Wards assembled out the front of the building and PRT officers with foam sprayers were lining up behind them. I waved happily as I approached, and the Wards shuffled around a bit. I stopped around where I thought the max range was for the foam guys, I wasn't going to take any chances with that crap.  
  
"Hey, guys!" I said cheerfully, "Thanks for stopping us all from being killed by that bomb!"  
  
I started slowly moving the normies down towards the PRT officers closest to the vans, I left them tied up but with a thin enough wire, they would be able to cut it easily enough.  
  
"Those are all the dudes from inside the Merchants base, I have no idea if they are members or not, but you'll figure it out," I said sheepishly.  
  
"I'm sure you all know Skidmark, the leader of the Merchants," I said as I floated him down to the Wards.  
  
I placed him a few meters away from Clockblocker before quickly retracting my wires, not today buddy. Clockblocker looked at Aegis and got a nod, so he strode forward to tap Skidmark once on the head before retreating again.  
  
"Lung killed Mush a week ago and Trainwreck quit the Merchants a while ago as well." I said pleasantly, "So you don't get the whole collection, sorry."  
  
"What about Squealer, you have her right there," Shadow Stalker said forcefully and pointed at the woman in question.  
  
I shook my head at the Ward.  
  
"Sorry, Squealer has decided to join my team. So I'm afraid I can't hand her over." I said apologetically. "They will have to do."  
  
"She's a criminal." Shadow Stalker said harshly.  
  
I blinked at her from behind my mask.  
  
"So am I, dumbass." I said condescendingly, "I hope I don't have to tell you I'm not turning myself in either?"  
  
Shadow Stalker took an aggressive step forward and I noticed that her costume was actually pretty awesome, she really looked like a death eater.  
  
"Anyway, thanks again for saving our asses from the bomb!" I said happily, before suddenly flying backward away from them.  
  
I saw Aegis put his hand up to his earpiece, and the other Wards were looking at him for instruction. Would they attack? I didn't think they would, they had a bunch of potentially hostile people in their custody now, it would be a bad move.

Aegis removed his hand before shaking his head to his team, they watched us until we moved behind a building and started pouring on the speed heading away from them. I was laughing when we touched down on the other side of the city.  
  
Mission accomplished, Coil would be pleased.


	22. Chapter 22

May 6th, 2011, Friday, 10:12 AM.  
  
Squealer was almost as bad at singing as I was, not that I would ever admit that I was actually bad out loud, but somehow she managed to sing even more obnoxiously then me, I suppose it _could_ have just been the strangely higher-pitch of her voice, but I couldn't be sure.  
  
Squealer was still going to be crashing on my couch for the foreseeable future, seeing as I had essentially made her homeless by scattering the Merchants, I felt some small measure of responsibility. The base was no doubt now completely overrun with PRT now, which meant that she didn't have a place go home to, and all of her things were there.  
  
I would have to figure out somewhere for her to sleep more permanently, she apparently hadn't had a place to stay in that wasn't the Merchant's base in years. I would also need to find a place for her to setup a new workshop if she were going to be making shit for the team.  
  
I have been wearing my mask constantly since I had brought her here, even while I was sleeping, and it was getting really fucking old.  
  
I thought about it for a while, I could probably ask Coil to find me some place, he seemingly had a hand in every pot in the city. He also most likely knew of a place that would be appropriate for a Tinker to setup shop. The obvious downside to this was that he would be aware of where Squealer was, I had recently found out that Coil had a tendency for sneaking double agents into people's teams, so he might try to poach Squealer. I narrowed my eyes at her unless he had already gotten to her?  
  
Nah, it seemed pretty unlikely.  
  
It looks like I was going to be shopping around for a small warehouse or something. My beautiful treasure hill was losing more of its mass by the day, and it would probably get worse, at least until I could figure out a way to approach Coil about that raise, I would have to do something about that soon.  
  
Squealer looked much the same as she had the day before, her face was still covered in splotchy purple bruises, but at least she no longer smelt like a dumpster. I had to threaten to toss her into the ocean if she didn't go clean up and in revenge she had spent two hours in my bathroom using up _all_ of my shampoo and most of my body wash. I couldn't help but think it was a worthy sacrifice to get rid of the smell.  
  
I was pulled out of my musings when my phone suddenly started ringing. I snatched it up and held it to my ear, expecting it to be Coil with another job.  
  
"Andy." Kayden's said darkly.  
  
The angry tone of her voice did a lot for my ability to focus.  
  
"Kayden?" I said curiously, "Why do you sound like you're about to kill someone?"  
  
"Because I _am_ about to kill someone." Kayden said furiously. "I just had the PRT come to my house and take Aster because the Undersiders unmasked the Empire."  
  
What?  
  
Why on earth would the Undersiders just do that out of nowhere? Wait, they probably didn't, Coil was running the Undersiders, was this another of Coil's plans cropping up again?  
  
"What?" I said weakly. "Where are you now?"  
  
"I'm at my apartment," Kayden said furiously, voice warped from the anger. "I'm going to _fucking_ kill them."  
  
Yikes.  
  
"Hold on a minute," I said firmly, "Meet me on the roof of my apartment in ten minutes, don't wear your costume."  
  
I hung up immediately, not wanting to give her the chance to argue and then run off into the city murdering people left and right. I was hoping that she would come straight here, I strode over to the bathroom and slapped my hand on the door.  
  
"What the fuck do you want?" Squealers said annoyed.  
  
At least her singing finally stopped.  
  
"We have a problem, so hurry up!" I demanded.  
  
My water bill was going to be massive if this two-hour shower nonsense continued for much longer.  
  


* * *

May 6th, 2011, Friday, 10:49 AM.  
  
"It's not like I have anywhere else to go, dickhead!" Squealer said nastily. "It's _your_ fault anyway."  
  
This was like the fifth time we have had the same argument, fuck the stupid rollerblades.  
  
"I am a _mercenary_ and I got paid money to turn you in too the coppers," I said defensively, "I didn't have to offer you a place in the team, feel free to fuck off anytime okay?"  
  
Squealer made a frustrated noise in the back of her throat, but our attention was drawn to the rooftop access door as it opened up. Kayden stepped out of the stairway wearing plain clothes, a bag hanging by her side that no doubt held her costume, she stopped in front of us and I immediately noted that her eyes were red, no doubt from crying.  
  
"I'm here," Kayden said tightly.  
  
I blew out a long breath before jumping straight into the deets.  
  
"I have been working for Coil _directly_ for a couple of months now." I said honestly, "I have been working with the guy _indirectly_ for around two years."  
  
Kayden just watched me quietly, probably having no idea where I was going with this.  
  
"Who the fuck cares?" Squealer yawned loudly.  
  
I felt my eye twitch at her inability to read the current atmosphere, or maybe she just didn't give a fuck, I couldn't be sure.  
  
"Shut up, it's relevant," I said annoyed. "The Undersiders are _also_ working for Coil."  
  
Kayden's eyes widened as she instantly made the connection I was leading her to, and fortunately enough for me, she was distracted enough by the information that she didn't immediately blast me off the roof.  
  
"If the Undersiders were responsible for revealing the Empires identities," I said resignedly. "It was likely on Coil's orders."  
  
"Get to the point, asshole." Squealer interjected, and I felt my eye twitch again.  
  
Kayden was staring intently at my face now, but she still hadn't attacked me, so I took it as a good sign.  
  
"I'm going to call Coil, and we can find out exactly what is happening." I explained quietly, "We can figure out what we are going to do about it afterward, is that alright?"  
  
"Fine," Kayden said shortly.  
  
I sighed before pulling out my phone.  
  
"If you are both quiet he won't realize anybody is listening in," I suggested quietly.  
  
Kayden gave a tight nod and I put the phone on speaker before pressing the call button, Coil answered immediately, leaving me off balance for a moment.  
  
"Urchin," Coil said calmly.  
  
Creepy, I hadn't had any time to figure out how to do this, so I would just have to handle it like I did everything else in my life, what's the worst that could happen?  
  
"Coil, you fucked my teammate up pretty badly," I said cheerfully, no time for pleasantries. "Do you want your ass kicked now, or should I make an appointment?"  
  
Kayden was now staring at me with a strange look on her face that I did my best to ignore. Squealer, however, had started laughing loudly in the background, I shot her a stern look which she couldn't see because of my god damned mask. I was seriously considering just revealing myself to her, so I didn't have to wear the fucking thing in my apartment anymore.  
  
Fuck it.  
  
I tore the thing off so she could see my face, I pointed at her aggressively, I'm fairly sure she got the hint because she made a zipping motion over her mouth, but the shit-eating grin plastered on her face betrayed her true feelings.  
  
"I believe we can sort this out without the need for any violence." Coil said dryly, "If you would allow me a moment to explain?"  
  
Kayden said nothing, showing a remarkable amount of restraint given that he had just all but confirmed that he was responsible for her daughter being taken from her. Kayden was definitely pissed off though, that much was obvious enough by her expression, but she was clearly more interested in getting information that might lead to either revenge or a resolution, and the best way to get either was to hear him out.  
  
"Sure," I said pleasantly, "An explanation sounds fantastic."  
  
Coil spent a moment composing himself before speaking again.  
  
"I have been working on taking down the other gangs in Brockton Bay for over two years." Coil's voice said evenly. "This particular plan, to reveal the Empire's identities was instigated more than a year ago."  
  
I had never heard the man talk like this before, and he was being remarkably open for some reason, maybe he _was_ actually worried about me coming after him? He had also used the word instigated, did that mean that he had paid someone to discover their identities and it had only just now borne fruit? Or did Coil already have their identities for a long time and only decided to release them now?  
  
Parallel to that, who else had Coil investigated to this extent? Did he know my civilian identity? The Wards? What about the other gangs, the Protectorate? This was actually pretty concerning, he might have the ability to fuck _everybody_ over at the drop of a hat. He had already shown that he didn't care about the unwritten rules if they were between him and his goal, were we all under threat now?  
  
"Purity only joined your team a little while ago, and it was entirely unexpected." Coil said calmly, "I actually _removed_ her name from the informational packet before I sent it out because she was on your team. The reason they went after her anyway was because of her civilian connection to Max Anders."  
  
So he hadn't gone out of his way to fuck her over _directly_ , but she had still gotten caught in the crossfire because of his actions, so I couldn't exactly let it slide.  
  
"So you only dumpstered her as collateral, that doesn't really mean much, considering the outcome was still the same," I said seriously.  
  
This was truly a cluster-fuck, goddammit Coil.  
  
"You are correct in that it was still a result of my actions," Coil said calmly, "I am simply explaining how this situation has come to be. However, I believe I was about to tell you how I would be seeking to remedy this situation."  
  
I had been monitoring Kayden's face throughout the conversation to see if she was about to suddenly go nuclear, but while her face _was_ tilting between anger and a forced calm she seemed to otherwise remain in control, she had also crossed her arms at some point, which meant they weren't pointed towards me, that was probably a good sign, right?  
  
"Go on, then," I said cheerfully.  
  
"The PRT currently has no actual proof of Purity's identity, only a strong suspicion." Coil said calmly, "It will not be enough to keep her daughter from her for more than a day or so."  
  
"Yeah, but _everyone_ will still think she is Purity," I interjected, seeing the massive hole in his argument.  
  
Kayden Anders had been married to Max Anders, pretty obvious given the same last name. Max Anders had been revealed as the civilian identity of Kaiser and Purity had been his enforcer for _years_. Purity had quit the empire a couple of years ago around the same time that Kayden had also divorced Max, it was clear as day. There wasn't actually any physical proof that she was Purity, sure, but everybody would be making the same connection I just did, and her family was now at risk.  
  
"It is possible." Coil admitted, "I am currently using some of my agents in the government to apply pressure on the PRT for acting on such weak evidence."  
  
Agents in the government? How far did this rabbit hole go exactly?  
  
Kayden seemed to be tilting more towards calm then angry now, a good thing for Coil's health if nothing else. Squealer was jiggling the imaginary zipper at the corner of her mouth, and I narrowed my eyes at her, don't you dare.  
  
"Rest assured, her daughter will be returned to her within three days, along with one Theo Anders, Max Anders son." Coil said calmly, "He was also taken from his school by the PRT around the same time."  
  
I watched as Kayden's eyes widened again, clearly, she hadn't been aware of this yet. I hadn't even known that there was a Theo, interesting. All of that was good but it definitely wasn't going to stop villains, mercenaries, or any of the other gangs from going after Kayden's family to use as leverage against her or Kaiser. They weren't going to stop simply because the police let her off the hook with a stern warning to not be a secret supervillain.  
  
"I am glad that you tried to fix the fuck up, man," I said honestly, I was genuinely happy that he wasn't suddenly taking enemy action against us. "But people will still come after her family, you _know_ they will."  
  
Coil paused for a long while at that, he was obviously trying to find something that would appease us enough to not come after him for what he had done. Not to brag or anything, but I was a pretty effective mercenary on my own, but now I had Purity on my side, that wasn't a fight anyone would walk into willingly if they didn't have to.  
  
The first solution that had popped into my head was for them to change names and move to a different city, which sucked, but it _was_ an option if Coil could facilitate it. Coil suggested it barely a second later, and I blinked in surprise. I watched as Squealer slowly dragged the imaginary zipper open, oh god.  
  
Kayden spoke up suddenly, revealing her presence to Coil.  
  
"I am not leaving Brockton Bay." Kayden said with forced calm, "If people come after my civilian identity or my family I can handle them."  
  
I had almost forgotten that she was a villain that could melt solid steel and topple buildings. Anyone stupid enough to come after her _would_ probably get deleted, but she had to know that it wouldn't help if they kidnapped her kid as a hostage. Squealer pretended to open her mouth and then closed it again without saying anything.  
  
I twitched.  
  
"Very well. If you change your mind, please don't hesitate to contact me and I will assist you." Coil said diplomatically.  
  
I found myself frowning, it felt like he was getting off too lightly, and the man had navigated this conversation _easily_ , seemingly without fear of the negotiations going badly. It had almost felt scripted in a way, was he using his mysterious Thinker power right now?

Fuck I wish I knew what his power was.  
  
"Are you satisfied with that Purity?" I asked quietly, somewhat distracted by my thoughts.  
  
"Yes," Kayden said shortly.  
  
Kayden looked exhausted and upset. Personally, I probably would have been pissed off enough to have gone and kicked Coil's ass anyway if he had fucked me over like that. Fuck it, strike while the iron is hot and all that jazz.  
  
"Coil," I said cheerfully, "Renegotiation; You've been getting free work out of Purity since she joined, and we have Squealer on the team now as well. You'll be paying for the entire team instead of just me, can you cover it?"  
  
Squealer looked interested in the conversation for the first time, instead of just doing her best to either piss me off or distract me.  
  
"I'm getting _paid_?" Squealer said astonished.  
  
I ignored her and Coil spoke up a moment later.  
  
"That is acceptable, I will offer them the same deal you yourself have." Coil said calmly, "Is that an acceptable conclusion to this situation?"  
  
I nodded in acceptance before remembering I was on the phone and that he couldn't see me.  
  
"Yeah, we're good." I sighed, "Coil if something like this happens again I really will have to kick your ass okay?"  
  
"Of course," Coil said calmly, seemingly unbothered by the threat. "I'll call you with the next job."  
  
"Sure," I said simply, before hanging up.  
  
I let out a loud sigh, what a shit-show. Kayden looked like she wanted to destroy something and cry at the same time, we both stood around in tense silence for a moment. Squealer just looked bored again.  
  
"If nothing happens in the next couple of days, I'll go and get your daughter back myself, alright?" I said honestly.  
  
I really hope it didn't come down to that, it would end up pretty much confirming that she was Purity if I were seen kidnapping her daughter from the PRT.  
  
"Fuck." Kayden said quietly, "I hate this."  
  
I stepped forward and patted her on the shoulder awkwardly.  
  
"Worst case scenario, we kidnap your kids from the kidnappers and then set you up in another city somewhere," I said light-heartedly. "It will work out, I'll make sure of it."  
  
Kayden let out what might have been a laugh if it didn't sound so much like a sob before she dragged me into a hug. I froze in her grip, before hesitantly moving to pat her on the back a few times. I stared over her shoulder at Squealer silently pleading for help, but she just started laughing.  
  
Fuck you, lady, fucking help me.  
  
"Yuck, cooties," I said nervously.  
  
Kayden squeezed me once before letting go, and I found myself remembering the last time I had been hugged. Gaston, Size Queen, and Belle had dragged me into a group hug after we had completed our first mission. The memory brought a surge of emotion with it, and I did my best to fight it down, I moved my mind onto something else, while Kayden fought to regain her composure.  
  
This entire situation could have ended a lot differently, I could have just gone straight out with Kayden and attacked the Undersiders in anger, the fight probably would have also drawn in some heroes at some point. Coil would have become our enemy, and he had a lot of resources to call in, it was a tip of the iceberg situation. I had recently discovered that the Travelers were also working for the guy as well and would have likely become the next threat to worry about.  
  
I knew about the Undersiders, the Travelers, Trainwreck, and I had a suspicion that another mercenary in Brockton Bay called Circus was also on his payroll. Those were all the ones that I knew about, but how many more were there that I didn't? Coil _also_ had a private army of soldiers, all equipped with Tinker-tech weapons, outfitted with the best armor and gear that money could buy.  
  
There was also nothing stopping him from hiring any number of other teams to try and take us down as well, like Faultline's team or even someone from out of town. Meanwhile, I wasn't even sure where his base was located, other than a guess that it was probably somewhere central in the city. The first meeting I had with the man occurred in Downtown, which meant that he could somehow move a bunch of heavily armed guys around the city with impunity, which spoke of familiarity with the area or an undetectable method of transport.  
  
I would have had to hire a Thinker or capture some of his caps to try and figure out where he was hiding in the first place, which would mean waiting or trying to track down somebody else first. It would all take time, all the while Coil would have been sending _more_ threats our way and planning more shit against us.  
  
I wasn't too worried about the individual capes, I was confident enough to give myself good odds against just about anyone in this city if they came after me alone, I could always run away as well, but constantly fighting off ambushes from multiple teams would suck balls.  
  
I would like to imagine that I would have conquered all of the teams sent after us and then found where his base was, beaten the crap out of him along with his army, but I knew that in reality, the entire situation would have been a gigantic cluster-fuck that we thankfully managed to avoid having to deal with.  
  
"If what Coil said was true," Kayden said quietly after she had recovered. "I should go home and wait for the PRT to get in contact with me."  
  
It seemed like the best idea, provided nobody decided to go after her in the meantime. The PRT would hopefully contact her civilian identity soon and tell her what was happening with her daughter.  
  
"Yeah," I said easily, "If you need help, or just somebody to talk to, you know where I live."  
  
I waved vaguely at where Squealer was standing.  
  
"She is also here I guess," I said dryly. "For whatever that's worth."  
  
Kayden glanced over at the other woman before turning back and raising an eyebrow at me, I shrugged at her.  
  
"Fuck you, idiot." Squealer said annoyed, before glancing at Kayden. "I'm better company then this dickhead."  
  
I felt my eye twitch again, goddammit she was annoying.  
  
We all said our goodbyes and Kayden left the same way she came, looking a lot calmer than she had when she first arrived. Squealer immediately followed her down the stairs, no doubt heading back to my apartment.  
  
I sat down on the edge of the roof and watched the city below. I needed to be more careful in the future, so shit like this didn't sneak up on me again. If I had checked the news this morning I would have had a couple of hours to prepare for this, which would have been _super_ helpful if we had needed to go attack someone.  
  
So, Coil had unmasked the Empire, all those capes now had their civilian lives ruined, what kind of effect would this have on the city? The heroes would no doubt go and try to arrest all of the Empire at their homes, they were all criminals after all, well most of them at least.

People like Kaiser, Hookwolf, Fenja, Menja, and Stormtiger weren't likely to go quietly, I had less information about what most of the others were like, other than the team-up with Alabaster or my brief meeting with Othala, Victor, and Rune.  
  
None of those capes would be able to go back to their homes now, so they would have to remain hidden away in the city somewhere. They would also probably have their bank accounts locked down by the police, which means they would soon be needing money. The likely result of that was that all of the ousted capes began stealing food or money to survive. More crime meant more heroes patrolling, which meant an increased risk of capture for all of the other capes running around the city.  
  
Goddammit, Coil.

* * *

May 6th, 2011, Friday, 11:19 AM.

Eventually, I headed back down to my apartment, still deep in thought and when I arrived Squealer was curled up on my couch watching a news report. It was a live reporting going on near Medhall, discussing the Empire's destructive retreat across the city. They had been attacking people, destroying buildings, and looting. Nearly all of their normal restraint was gone now, as they tried to find resources and safety, anything they could do to keep their heads above the water-.  
  
I regretted the thought instantly.  
  
There were additional reports popping up of skirmishes with heroes all over the city, they had a clip of Hookwolf hanging off a three-story building with his giant metal arm jammed inside to hold himself there, he was shaped like a gigantic metal wolf, entirely comprised of dangerously moving metal pieces. The glass windows of the building had been shattered and were falling down to the distant ground below.  
  
Hookwolf was one of the most powerful capes in the city and now he no longer had to color between the lines, I watched as he tossed a car down the street, and it slammed into another building. How long would this go on for?  
  
The Empire was the largest gang in the city, with fourteen parahumans, it was a ridiculous number of super-powered people to have on a single local team. In Brockton Bay, the Protectorate had eight heroes. The Ward's had seven, and New Wave had eight. If any of the smaller teams tried to fight them alone they would get completely manhandled. Fortunately enough, it seemed that the Empire had split off into several smaller groups instead of one large unbeatable unit and were now scattered all over the city.  
  
I sighed as Hookwolf tossed another car into a building, this wasn't going to be a single-day event, the city was going to be a warzone for a while it seemed.  
  
Coil really knew how to get the ball rolling.


	23. Chapter 23

May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 9:30 AM.  
  
It had been over a week since Coil had screwed over the Empire and Kayden along with them. Brockton Bay had definitely become worse off because of it, as the Empire, now scattered across the city had been taking out their anger on everything around them. The fighting was, fortunately, starting to settle down, it had even been two days since the last incident, it might have even been a new record.  
  
It seemed like the identities of the Empire was all everyone wanted to talk about, it was all over the news, all over the internet, and all the kids at school couldn't help themselves. Which resulted in a large number of fights between some of those more sympathetic towards the empire. I had already seen three fights in the last two days which was a record amount for Arcadia. I made sure to keep my head down, I just had to make it through the rest of this year, and I would finally be free of the prison they called school.  
  
There had been several large battles between the Protectorate, New Wave, and the Empire in the Downtown area, one of which wasn't too far from my school and it made me incredibly nervous. I swear to god if Kaiser or Hookwolf destroyed Arcadia and I have to repeat my senior year I would absolutely lose it.  
  
Kayden's precarious situation had somehow gone surprisingly well, no doubt thanks to Coil's supposed agents working behind the scenes. Aster and Theo had both been placed back in Kayden's custody within two days, which allowed me to stop plotting revenge and finally relax. Kayden had seemed happy enough with the outcome, and so long as nobody attacked them it would probably stay that way.  
  
There had been no additional jobs from Coil in the meantime though, which was making me feel a little uneasy. I had heard about the Undersiders attacking the fundraiser that the PRT had held for the heroes. Judging by the released footage of the event it had certainly seemed to go poorly for them at the start, mostly thanks to Armsmaster preparation, although they _had_ managed to escape this time completely without my assistance. It was possible that Coil just hadn't thought they needed our help this time, and not that our working relationship had been irreparably damaged.  
  
I hoped that was the case and not the rift that I had been dreading for years.  
  
I had made no progress at all on buying a warehouse, mostly because I wasn't sure how to do it without attracting a ton of attention to myself. If a random eighteen-year-old guy who was still in school suddenly turned up trying to buy a warehouse out of nowhere it would look very suspicious, I had absolutely no doubt that kind of thing would get me placed on a list somewhere. The authorities had to have been on the lookout for exactly that kind of thing, what with the existence of capes and hidden bases.  
  
I was definitely not willing to go through Coil for this either, because my faith in the guy had been shaken pretty badly by the Empire situation. I wasn't comfortable with him knowing exactly where the warehouse would be located, because he had already proven that he was willing to break the rules if it got him what he wanted.  
  
I had a sinking feeling that he already had all of the information he needed on me. I had known the guy for years now, there was no way he hadn't paid someone to figure out my identity, I had a feeling he probably knew who most of the capes in the city were in their civilian lives. Either way, the less incriminating or identifying information that I provided him with the better, I didn't want to wake up one day and find myself in the same position. My only defense against him if he suddenly turned on me was that he knew if he tried to screw me over I would come after him.  
  
Not much of a defense I'll admit, but it would have to do, for now.  
  
So now I was stuck with Squealer camping on my couch, which was giving me a giant case of the sads. I could already see the fake leather beginning to flake off the cushions from the constant use, I fucking loved that couch and it deserved so much better than this. Squealer was still driving me up the wall as well, for whatever reason she had taken it upon herself as a challenge to try and piss me off.  
  
I had no idea what her end goal was though, maybe she wanted me to be so annoyed that I fired her? Who knows, either way, I just fought fire with fire, I could be _very_ annoying, after all.  
  
"What the fuck?!" Squealer shouted angrily from the bathroom. "Andy you fucker!"  
  
I started laughing my ass off, I guess she had finally spotted the dicks I had drawn all over her face while she was sleeping. My revenge for her breaking into my computer and finding out my name, get wrecked idiot.  
  
"Now who's the dickhead!" I shouted gleefully, "Pro-tip: It's you!"  
  
I heard a crash that was either her slamming the shower door or punching the wall, I wasn't sure which. I heard the sound of water a moment later, so it was probably the shower door.  
  
"Just you fucking wait!" Squealer shouted furiously. "I'm going to kick your fucking ass!"  
  
I looked nervously at the door for a moment, she sounded pretty angry this time, I would probably need to start sleeping with one eye open.  
  
"Hah! You're a thousand years too young to try and defeat me, Squeaky!" I said bravely.  
  
Never show fear, gents, they can smell it.  
  
"What the fuck did you just call me?" Squealer said horrified.  
  
I just laughed nervously.

* * *

May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 11:43 AM.  
  
I ended up fleeing my apartment before she got out of the shower, she was still shouting when I left, so it was better to not risk it. I stepped out of the stairwell and onto the sidewalk. I made it exactly five steps down the street before an awful keening alarm suddenly started up, scaring the absolute shit out of me.  
  
"What the hell?!" I yelped in alarm.  
  
I spun around to stare at where the noise was coming from, on top of the nearest power pole there was a speaker aimed at a downwards angle that I had never noticed before. I thought it was echoing down the street for a moment until I realized that there was _more_ of the speakers down the street, repeating the keening wail.  
  
What the hell was this?  
  
"Leave your homes. Find the nearest shelter. Follow the directions of local authorities. Leave your homes." The P.A system said sternly.  
  
It was obviously a recording in a woman's voice, on repeat. The words blared out just as loud as the siren had, and I could hear the same lines being echoed off almost every street corner around me. People started appearing from inside the surrounding building, all shouting and carrying on. They started tearing off down the footpaths in the same general direction, and a guy bumped my shoulder in his panic.  
  
I stared after the man in confusion, I had never heard anything like this before, what exactly was happening? I reached out and snagged a guy my age by the shoulder, the guy spun out of my grip.  
  
"Don't touch me!" The guy said angrily.  
  
I rolled my eyes at him before pointing down the street.  
  
"What's the siren about? Where is everybody going?" I demanded.  
  
He stared at me like I was an idiot.  
  
"Don't you read your mail?" The guy demanded, "It's a fucking Endbringer!" before stepping back into the wave of people fighting their way down the street.  
  
I felt an uneasiness settle in my stomach before I turned around and headed straight back up to my apartment. Fuck, which one was it? Which one had attacked last time, I couldn't remember, I hadn't been keeping track of them lately either. It had always felt like it was some distant thing that happened somewhere else, I mean there _had_ been some attacks in different parts of America, but I couldn't remember where.  
  
One of them had attacked Canberra recently, hadn't it? That was in Australia I think? I remember one of them had attacked Japan as well, years ago, it was the reason that there were now so many Japanese citizens now living in America. The Endbringers had never come anywhere near Brockton Bay before, why the fuck would they come here now?  
  
I felt a chill down my spine, which one was it? I swear to god it had better not be the fucking water one. I slammed my apartment door open, before striding straight into the middle of the room to find Squealer, standing naked next to the couch, her towel on the floor next to her holding her underwear in her hands.  
  
I stared at her shamelessly as her look of shock quickly turned to anger.  
  
"I am going to _fucking_ -" Squealer started.  
  
I cut her off immediately, not bothering to look away.  
  
"One of the Endbringers is attacking Brockton Bay." I said distractedly, "You should put your tits away, can't you read the atmosphere?"  
  
Squealer stared at me, stuck somewhere between fear and anger. I stared at Squealer stuck somewhere between her face and her belly button.  
  
"Fuck!" Squealer said panicked. "Which one is it?"  
  
Squealer started pulling her clothes on in a rush, and I let out a thoughtful hum as I watched her, causing her to look up at me again.  
  
"Stop fucking staring dumbass!" Squealer demanded as she yanked her pants up.  
  
I nodded seriously at her request, without looking away.  
  
"I have no idea which one it is," I said honestly, slowly getting my mind back in gear. "I'm going to help fight it though, what are you going to do?"  
  
Squealer yanked her shirt down over her head, before turning to stare at me again.  
  
"Why the fuck would you fight it?" Squealer demanded, "Those things kill most of the people that turn up!"  
  
I scoffed at her, clearly, Squealer had forgotten exactly who she was talking to.  
  
"I'm not going to let some flying-feathered-fuck kill me, who the hell do you think I am?" I demanded.  
  
Where was the god damned respect? This was Polite Guy all over again.  
  
"Are you retarded?!" Squealer said furiously. "It's a _fucking_ Endbringer!"  
  
" _You're_ a fucking Endbringer!" I accused, matching her energy.  
  
"What the fuck does that mean?!" Squealer raged, stepping forward aggressively.  
  
"I don't fucking know!" I shouted back, "I'm still thinking about your tits!"  
  
Squealer immediately tried to punch me in the face, and I barely managed to sway back out of the way of the sudden attack. My phone started ringing in my pocket, so I quickly generated a wire construct to hold her back while I answered it.  
  
"Hello?" I said curiously.  
  
Squealer was doing her best to fight off the wire hand I sent her way, but it certainly looked like a losing battle from where I was standing.  
  
"Andy," Kayden said calmly. "Are you going?"  
  
I had been thinking of calling Kayden before, but Squealer being naked had completely derailed me.  
  
"I am," I said easily, "I don't think Squealer is up for it though."  
  
"Fucking thumb!" Squealer strained, trying to break the hand's grip. "Get your fucking hand off of me!"  
  
I let the construct disintegrate around her obligingly. Squealer quickly dragged herself back to her feet, red-faced and breathing heavily.  
  
"Do I want to know what is going on over there?" Kayden said strangely.  
  
I thought about explaining it for about exactly one second, before ignoring her question entirely.  
  
"What are you going to do?" I asked cheerfully, "Where are Aster and Theo?"  
  
"I'm going with you." Kayden said simply, "I've already dropped them off at a shelter near the edge of the city, Theo is going to look after Aster for me."  
  
"Nice," I said happily, "I'll probably drop Squealer off at one of the shelters, where do you want to meet?"  
  
Squealer was starting to look worried once more, I would have to do something to distract her again.  
  
"Your apartment?" Kayden suggested.  
  
"Alright," I agreed, "See you in five."  
  
I hung up, before heading over to where I had stashed my costume.  
  
"Fuck the shelters, take me to where all the capes are." Squealer said sounding torn.  
  
I shrugged my shoulders at her as I got changed, and I made sure to keep an eye on her, just in case she tried to get some revenge, but she just watched me get changed, fucking perv.  
  
"You sure?" I asked curiously, "How are you going to help?"  
  
"Fuck!" Squealer said in frustration, "I don't know, I'll fucking drive injured people around or carry shit for the medical people, does it fucking matter?"  
  
I finished getting dressed in record time, with ample use of my power to speed things along.  
  
"Do whatever you want, _idiot_." I taunted, "Just don't die."  
  
Squealer narrowed her eyes at the insult but somehow managed to hold herself back from going nuclear again. Shit, she was starting to build up an immunity to my bullshit, I would have to step up my game.  
  
"Let's _nip_ on out of here then, before everything goes _tits_ up." I smirked at her, "What do you say, Squeaky?"  
  
That seemed to do the trick.

* * *

May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 11:57 AM.  
  
Kayden arrived in a blinding flash of light, barely a minute after we had gotten to the roof. I watched as she touched down and the light receded, revealing her standing in her white bodysuit.  
  
"Jesus Christ," I greeted cheerfully, "That's twice I've been flashed today, bitches be thirsty."  
  
Kayden narrowed her eyes at the comment, before glancing over at Squealer.  
  
"Stop bringing it up you fucking idiot!" Squealer demanded before she took another swing at me.  
  
I stumbled out of range of her attack, before circling around to keep Kayden in between me and the angry lady.  
  
"You sound like you've had a rough day," Kayden said dryly.  
  
Squealer tried to get at me, but I managed to keep my meat shield in place.  
  
"You try living with this dickhead." Squealer huffed in annoyance.  
  
Squealer gave up on trying to get me, unwilling to try and bodily push past Kayden.  
  
"I've had nightmares about it," Kayden admitted honestly.  
  
I stepped out from behind her in shock and found them both smirking at each other. What the fuck was going on here exactly?  
  
"Hold on a god damned minute," I said completely offended.  
  
"It's worse than any nightmare." Squealer said sullenly. "Trust me."  
  
Kayden nodded in understanding.  
  
"You have my sympathies," Kayden said with false sadness.  
  
"Stop teaming up against me!" I demanded, looking between them. "This is insubordination-"  
  
I was distracted by a motion in the corner of my eye and turned to see a massive armored suit flying through the sky, headed down towards the city, a roiling cloud of dark smoke trailing behind it.  
  
"Is that Dragon?" I said amazed, turning to face it.  
  
What could only be a god damned mech, dropped down pretty close to the beachfront, which I did my absolute best to ignore the existence of, right next to a large multi-story building that was sitting on some kind of hill. I squinted in that direction, trying to make out the tiny moving shapes, there were people all around the building, standing on the grass, and the car park beside the building.  
  
"That's Dragon." Kayden confirmed, "I guess that is where we are going next."  
  
Why did the meeting point have to be right next to the beach? I felt my stomach twist at the thought of going over there, it must have shown on my face because Squealer was looking at me strangely.  
  
"What's your problem?" Squealer frowned.  
  
Kayden also turned at the words and followed her gaze up to my face, I belatedly dragged on my mask.  
  
"No problem here," I said weakly.  
  
I sent a wire out to Squealer and generated a platform for her to stand on, before lifting myself off the ground with my own wire armor. Squealer stepped onto the platform without issue, still frowning.  
  
"Andy?" Kayden asked quietly.  
  
I swallowed, trying to fight down the nausea that was clawing at me and did my best to mask it with false cheer.  
  
"Full Frontals, let's go kick some ass." I forced out.  
  
If there was one silver lining to this situation, it had to be that the Endbringer couldn't possibly be Leviathan, the fucking water one, because there was no way we would be meeting right next to the beach if that was the case, that would be stupid as fuck, we would totally get our asses kicked trying to fight the thing near the water.  
  
Kayden turned her power back on before lifting up into the air beside us. I floated slowly towards where the building was, slowly building up speed. The awful feeling increased as we inched our way closer to the ocean, but I managed to force the panic down.  
  
"You're acting weird as fuck." Squealer accused, thankfully distracting me for a moment.  
  
I did my best to focus on her high-pitched voice, rather than the looming mass of water we were approaching. I don't know why I was being such a pussy about this, I should just tell them and get it over with, who cares if they laughed.  
  
" _Fuck_." I said forcefully, "I'm scared of the water, Squeaky."  
  
A flash of annoyance crossed her face at the name, but I'd managed to derail her initial response. I looked down at the building's car park below us, there were so many capes, I had never seen so many in one place, not even Somer's Rock had anywhere close to this amount. There were _hundreds_ , and Kayden's brightly glowing form had attracted a great deal of attention from a lot of them, but they made no move to attack us. At least the Endbringer truce was still in effect, that was nice.  
  
"Are you scared of water, or just the ocean?" Kayden said quietly.  
  
Squealer just kept on staring at me with narrowed eyes, waiting for her opportunity.  
  
"Large masses of water, I'm fine with showers or rain," I admitted quietly. "The ocean fucking _sucks_."  
  
Squealer laughed suddenly, and I turned to glare at her, she returned the look with a smirk.  
  
"Poor baby," Squealer mocked, "Are you going to cry me a _river_?"  
  
I felt my eye twitch at the words. This. Bitch.  
  
"It's _such_ a shame too because I would have _loved_ to see you both in a swimsuit." I shot back immediately, "Then again, I've already seen _everything_ that Squeaky has to offer."  
  
"Fuck you!" Squealed shouted immediately.  
  
Kayden just sighed at the bickering.  
  
I cut off Squealers tirade before it could get started by suddenly dropping down towards one specific cape below, standing apart from the others. Squealer let out a terrified shout as her platform suddenly vanished, I caught her barely a moment later in a harness of wires.  
  
"Good morning, Dragon!" I said cheerfully.  
  
I had strategically landed with my back to the ocean because _fuck_ looking at it. I knew it was still there, it almost felt like a presence bearing down on my mind. The hulking mech was sitting on its own, facing the beach, it had a bunch of shoulder-mounted weapons, and it sat poised as if it were about to shoot the fucking ocean.  
  
"I knew you were one of the good ones," I said happily.  
  
The head of Dragon's massive mech tilted down to look at us and I smiled up at the giant from behind my mask, anybody that hated the water was alright by me.  
  
Squealer was dead silent as she stared at the massive machine with wide eyes, I wondered if it counted as a vehicle to her power? If she had the tools could she make something like this? I couldn't help but imagine the giant rusted pile of crap that she would have added on top of it and shivered.  
  
"Urchin, Purity, Squealer." Dragon said surprised. "I'm surprised to see you here."  
  
Dragon's voice was slightly synthesized and _very_ noticeably female, I was going to have to shoot my shot.  
  
"Dragon, I like your voice," I said smoothly, "Can I get your number?"  
  
Kayden, still glowing brightly beside me, turned to stare at the side of my head incredulously, but I ignored her. Dragon tilted the mech's head to the side as if confused and I stared hopefully up at where I thought the cockpit would be, trying to guess what the pilot might look like based on her voice.  
  
"Why do you want my phone number?" Dragon asked strangely. "Do you want to turn yourself in?  
  
What?  
  
"Crash and burn, Idiot!" Squealer cackled hysterically.  
  
I brushed off what could only be the foul sting of rejection with all the grace I could muster, anything was better than thinking about what was right behind me.  
  
"Moving on," I said awkwardly, "What's the situation, beautiful?"  
  
This was one of the members of the Protectorate, so surely she would have some idea about what we should be doing, I was thinking I could try to make some barriers or something.  
  
"The meeting will be starting very soon, inside the building." Dragon said curiously, gesturing with a wing. "I highly recommend that you attend, we will be discussing strategy and assigning groups.  
  
"Sweet!" I said happily, "Thanks Dragon, we should totally get coffee sometime, bye!"  
  
I patted the giant mech on the leg before heading towards the building doing my best to ignore the laughter coming from Squealer. Most of the capes that had been idling around in the car park were now either already inside or heading there now. I noticed that Kayden had remained strangely quiet, no doubt impressed by how much game I had with the ladies. Eventually, we pushed our way through the throngs of capes into a massive room that had plastic chairs everywhere.  
  
As soon as I had a moment to look around the room I found my next distraction, a lady with long pale purple hair leaning against a wall, she was even taller than I was. I stared at her for a moment astonished, before moving straight towards her, she was at _least_ as tall as my mother had been.

For whatever reason this woman was also naked, well at least I _though_ t she was until I had gotten close enough to see that she was actually completely covered with what looked like tiny crystals, they stuck to her like she had been poured into pale pink glitter, and I could see every contour of her body perfectly, leaving nothing to the imagination.  
  
"Damn lady, you are tall as fuck!" I said amazed as I stopped in front of her.  
  
The unicorn-woman stared down at me blankly, and I met her gaze easily. Kayden hissed something under her breath and tried to tug me backward by my coat, sounding worried, even Squealer was standing several meters back watching the three of us with wide eyes.  
  
"You are quite tall as well." The unicorn said calmly. "Who are you?"  
  
"Urchin. You're in the Protectorate, aren't you? I think I've seen you on a poster somewhere before." I said thoughtfully, "What's your name? No wait let me guess. The Pink Unicorn? Glitterhorse? The Horniest Woman?"  
  
Kayden made a strangled sound in the back of her throat, but the tall pink woman just watched me for a long moment before nodding.  
  
"My name is Narwhal. I am indeed a member of the Protectorate, the Toronto branch specifically." Narwhal said calmly. "I'm sorry to say that I have not heard of you before."  
  
I pouted for a moment, before realizing that she couldn't see it. Kayden was still holding onto the back of my costume as if she might need to suddenly pull me out of the way of something but she seemed slightly less panicked at least.  
  
"I'll have to do something really impressive then, so you remember me," I said cheerfully. "We should totally hang out sometime and do tall people things!"  
  
Narwhal watched me silently as I suddenly walked away from her, my next distraction had just caught my eye from across the room, I had better go say hello to her before she did something drastic. Kayden let out a sigh before letting go of my costume, choosing instead to remain with Squealer.  
  
I sprawled in the plastic chair next to her, curious as to why she was sitting alone. I noted that the rest of the Undersiders were sitting nearby, staring at her sullenly, I waved to Regent and got a nod in return.  
  
"Skitter," I said happily. "Bite anyone on the-"  
  
"Shut up." Skitter said waspishly.  
  
"Bee in your bonnet, huh?" I said curiously. "Want to talk about it?  
  
Skitter stared at me for a long time, staying remarkably tense. I had seen her a bunch of times before, and we usually had something of a back and forth going. The way she was sitting now was like she was either about to attack me or was expecting to be attacked by me in turn. I couldn't remember having seen her look like this before.  
  
It had to have been because of the Endbringer, which was enough to make anyone tense.  
  
"Do you know a girl named Dinah Alcott?" Skitter said suddenly.  
  
I noted movement in the Undersiders group, as Tattletale had just stood up abruptly, and was looking over at us both warily. Skitter had noticed the movement as well and had glanced over at her teammate in alarm, they were all looking very tense all of a sudden as if something were about to happen.  
  
"Nope." I said honestly, "Who's that?"  
  
Skitter turned back to look at me and Tattletale quickly started moving towards us.  
  
"The twelve-year-old girl that Coil kidnapped, routinely drugs, and keeps locked in his basement." Skitter said quietly.  
  
Tattletale had arrived, and the two of them started whispering to each other, voices harsh. I stared at the side of Skitter's head as I tried to figure out exactly how I felt about the words she had just spoken. I tried to reconcile the Coil I knew, calm and collected, with the image that she had just put in my head, but they were nothing alike.  
  
Coil was meticulous, he planned years ahead, and as far as I knew he hadn't actually killed a single person, not even the members of the gangs that he had considered his enemies. He usually hired teams of professionals to take care of problems quickly and quietly. If he needed something done he just paid for it, seemingly with his unending horde of gold.  
  
Why would he kidnap a random twelve-year-old girl and drug her? The action seemed so out of character for him, almost as out of character as suddenly unmasking every cape in the Empire. I was vaguely aware of someone at the front of the room talking, but I didn't have a chance of focusing on the words, my mind was racing.  
  
Coil never seemed to do anything just for the sake of it, there was always something for him to gain, some condition he set out to fulfill. So what was his motive here? There _had_ to be something special about the girl, she was important somehow.

Dinah Alcott, I almost felt like I might have read the name somewhere before, back when I had been researching people who could have been the Rail Tracer. One of the files maybe, was it one of the train staff? I vaguely remembered searching through that same list hundreds of times, had I seen the name there?  
  
One of the relatives of someone who I thought was suspicious? I couldn't remember, but now I was almost positive that was a real person.  
  
Skitter was part of the Undersiders, and they all worked for Coil. Why would she suddenly tell me this? She knew that I also worked for Coil, hadn't I told her that during our first meeting? Was she trying to turn me against Coil or was it real and she had just found out about it? Tattletale was clearly upset that she had told me, why would that be the case? Why wasn't Skitter sitting with the other Undersiders? Were they fighting?  
  
Could I trust what she told me? _Fuck._  
  
I stood up suddenly, before ripping my phone out of my pocket. Skitter and Tattletale both moved away from me instantly at the abrupt movement, sending the plastic chair skidding across the floor, bugs crawled out from under Skitter's hair, buzzing threateningly. A man made completely out of metal stepped between the three of us warily, looking like he wanted to play peacekeeper.  
  
The rest of the Undersiders had stood up now as well and were quickly making their way over to us. Metal Man started saying something, but I ignored him, scrolling through my phone for the right contact, I found it and pressed call. I watched as the Metal Man gave them both armbands, he held one out to me, but I made no move to take it.  
  
"Urchin," Coil said calmly.  
  
The two Undersiders were still staring at me but now Tattletale looked truly alarmed, someone was still speaking to the group far behind me. Metal Man was still staring at me steadily, his hand was still outstretched.  
  
"Coil, who the fuck is Dinah Alcott?" I demanded.  
  
Tattletale turned suddenly to stare across the room, which is when someone shouted at the top of their lungs and a massive wave smashed through the front windows of the building.


	24. Chapter 24

May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 12:17 PM.  
  
I didn't get the chance to hear Coil's response because a horrifying amount of water started pouring into the building through the now shattered windows and my phone fell to the floor forgotten. I felt a spike of adrenaline overtake me and I took a terrified step backwards.  
  
The room was a scene of chaos, everybody was trying to get as far away from the window as possible. Forcefields of every colour and shape flickered into existence at the windows, trying to stem the flow of water to no avail. The corner of the ceiling started to buckle, and I lashed out with wires almost without registering what I was doing. Another set of forcefields appeared there a second before my mesh of shield-wires grew into existence to help support its weight, it was barely enough to stop the roof from caving in on us.  
  
The water was knee-deep in the room already, and I immediately started tearing apart the wall of the building opposite the wave. I sent out thousands of additional wires to loop around everybody in range, but the instant I started moving them out of the building I suddenly found myself somewhere else.  
  
 _There was water everywhere._  
  
It was horrifying, we were on a road now, closer to my apartment building and at a higher ground. The massive wave that had struck Brockton Bay was rushing back into the ocean, the rain was pouring down from the sky adding to the mess and I abruptly became aware of more than just the frantic thudding of my heart in my chest.  
  
I was still holding dozens of people off the ground with wires, and they were all struggling to get out of my grasp. There were even more of those not caught in my wires standing all around me, coughing and spluttering in the shallow water, the ones I had been about to leave behind, I felt sick.  
  
" _Urchin_." _Skitter said urgently, as I dropped her to the ground next to Tattletale. "Stop!"_  
  
Some of them had already recovered and were already moving on to do their jobs, dragging people up to the tops of the nearby buildings. I lifted up into the air away from them all, unable to focus on anything other than the water.  
  
I moved higher into the air, to get as far away from the water as I could manage, and the higher vantage point allowed me to see more of the damage that the wave had caused to the city. The boardwalk had been completely torn apart, what did remain was solidly underwater, cars had been tipped over and dragged around from the force.  
  
 _I fought desperately to keep my head above the water, fighting against the broken seatbelt but it wouldn't budge._  
  
Leviathan stood amongst the rubble, and it looked exactly like the pictures online. It seemed even bigger in person, even floating so high above the city did nothing to diminish its sheer size. Even through the furious rain, I could see its asymmetrical head darting around, trying to take in everything at once before it finally settled its gaze directly on the capes still standing ready at the base of the buildings.  
  
 _Water was pouring in through the shattered windshield, and dad was missing entirely._  
  
I could see a bright spark of light flickering up into the sky in the distance, the sight cut through the fog of my mind for a moment briefly brought me out of the panic. Kayden was still alive, and she had been with Squealer, who must have been alive as well.  
  
Leviathan moved suddenly, one moment hypnotically swaying in place, and then suddenly it was moving towards the capes at a blistering pace. It was the fastest thing I had ever seen, it almost looked as if it was running _atop_ the shallow water and its sheer size made the feat look even more ludicrous. A Leviathan shaped column of water was left in his wake, sloshing to the ground surging up the sides of buildings, and crashing forward at great speeds, adding even more water to the flooded streets.  
  
I barely finished the thought before the massive creature had smashed into the group of capes with ridiculous force. I already knew, just from that charge alone, that I wouldn't be able to catch it while it was moving, it was far too fast.  
  
If I took a shot at it from here, I would need to attack dozens of meters in front of it, just to have a _chance_ of hitting it while in motion but I couldn't see all of the capes as easily with all of the rain, I would likely end up injuring or killing them if I just started bombarding the thing with skyscraper-sized pillars.  
  
I would have to hem it in, close off every direction it hoped to move in, and then bury it in mountain of cables to have a hope of restraining it. Could I stop its movements with a thousand cables wound around its limbs and body? What about a _million_? There was only one way to find out.  
  
I started sending thousands of tiny wires across the sky in every direction, straight outwards in a line and then angling them straight down to the streets far below, stabbing them deep into the tarmac, doing my best to keep them evenly spaced, and creating an invisible wire cage for tens of blocks around where the fighting had centered. I did my best to keep the wires in the middle of the streets, and away from the buildings, I doubt I managed it without error, it was too difficult to see from this distance in the rain.  
  
I already knew I would end up causing severe damage to the city, I would just have to hope that they didn't try and make me pay for it.  
  
As I carefully moved the wires into position I watched the fighting far below me. What had to of been Legend's lasers were branching out all over the place and smashing into Leviathans hide, a massive spray of water burst up into the air to block their advance, but they just went around it. Leviathan's skin was glowing bright red from the heat, and I saw a blinding flash of light smash into its torso, sending it stumbling back a step, possibly one of Kayden's attacks.  
  
I started increasing the thickness of the wires all at once, they rapidly increased in size until each was as large around as a house, they slowly sealed themselves together into a massive rectangular wall of pillars, standing twice as tall as the buildings trapped inside the massive cage.  
  
I started generating more wires, this time from all of the pillars themselves, small but easily visible things that started moving inwards at a snail's pace, like a massive wall of moving metal. I manipulated them around obstacles, and past people, inching closer to the fighting.  
  
I felt several people appear on top of one of the pillars before another much larger group appeared suddenly near one of the corners, the teleporter that had saved us from the building perhaps.  
  
I visually checked on Leviathan's position again, just in time to watch him take a short sharp leap forward before coming to an instant stop, and a wave of water shot forward at horrific speed. My stomach twisted again at the sudden appearance of so much water from absolutely nowhere before something impacted it and the water exploded in every direction.  
  
Leviathan suddenly rocked backward on his feet before he was slammed into the road with a crack that I could hear even from up here. The road must have shattered below it because the water level dropped abruptly around it before surging up again a moment later.  
  
I kept on slowly tightening the net around the thing, dragging anything that was still moving up into the air and onto the pillars as I slowly filled the cage with wire. The massive wave of metal was still blocks away from the fighting, like a hundred million writhing snakes tangling their way ever inwards and filling the streets with metal.  
  
I could feel more and more people appearing on my wall by the second, through my own actions and the actions of the capes with Mover ratings.  
  
My attention was dragged back to the Endbringer a moment later when Dragons massive mech suddenly opened fire on it. Explosions rocked the area around the creature before Dragon started hitting it with what looked like a large cone of liquid fire. Leviathan immediately struck out at the mech several times through the attack, sending chunks of her thick metal amour careening through the air to smash into the walls and buildings.  
  
A massive explosion suddenly erupted right where they had been fighting, sending Leviathan reeling backward away from the force, but I couldn't see Dragon through the smoke any longer. Several streaks of bright pink light cut across a street and into stabbed Leviathans hide, somehow sharp enough to penetrate its skin and burying deep inside it, even more, followed after a moment, seemingly focused around its legs.

A large grey blur smashed into Leviathans torso before the Endbringer was smashed flat on its back once more, another hail of pink streaks rained down on him from above pinning it in place.  
  
A large motion in the direction of the beach caught my eye and I turned bodily to look at it. I stared in horror as another massive wave surged towards the city, about half as tall as my pillars.  
  
 _The car was underwater now, and the water was murky with blood._  
  
I immediately started making another series of pillars in front of my cage, a massive wedge pointed towards the ocean. It was only half as tall as the wave when it hit, but it managed to direct most of the water around my field. I could feel the wedge buckling under the force, tearing the pillars out of the ground with its unrelenting force, and I started generating even more wire pillars to reinforce the structure. The water was pushed around the edges of the cage, I watched as the unprotected roads and buildings outside the cage vanished and crumbled beneath the vast amount of water.  
  
 _Mum was dead, impaled on what was left of the windshield, and then there was wire all around me._  
  
I couldn't help it, my breakfast forced its way up and out of my throat. I spent the next thirty seconds throwing up violently, barely having the presence of mind to pull my mask away from my mouth.  
  
When I was finally about to pull myself together and refocus on the Endbringer, I saw one of the taller buildings suddenly warp strangely, the middle of it sucked in almost like an hourglass, before bending sideways and crashing down on top of Leviathan with a massive sound of screeching metal and shattering glass that reached all the way up to me. There were only a couple of blocks directly around the fallen building that wasn't filled with wire now.  
  
I was almost ready now, I just needed the last capes to get out of the way.  
  
Leviathan made the choice for me, realizing it was now completely surrounded by walls of walls hundreds of meters high that stretched much higher than the buildings around it. It had nowhere left to run, so instead, it dashed straight into my wires, intending to break straight through them and escape. Leviathan moved much faster than I had seen it move before and made it about two hundred meters into the mess before it ran into one of the many pillars I had created inside the zone.  
  
Leviathan managed to dig halfway into it before it lost most of its momentum, it turned around cutting back the other way only to run straight into another pillar. Leviathan spun in a circle as the wires solidified into massive pillars around him, leaving him trapped inside with nowhere to run. It stared up at me with its asymmetrical face and I stared straight back at it from above as I filled the space above his head with more pillars, sealing it inside.  
  
Leviathan immediately tried to dig himself free, but he was completely subsumed in my wires now. I weaved them together into cables and drew them tight around its ill-proportioned body, Leviathan immediately broke most of them with its struggles, but I just generated more from every direction until he was completely covered in millions of woven wires. I started turning the entire area around it into a solid mass of weaved cables and massive pillars.  
  
I let myself drop down to the nearest outer pillar and concentrated solely on keeping him contained. The creature thrashed furiously, and when a person suddenly stepped up beside me completely silent, my heart just about jumped out of my chest.  
  
" _Fuck!_ " I hissed terrified and angry, barely stopping myself from smashing the cape flat onto the pillar. "Wear a _fucking_ bell!"  
  
"You are the one doing this?" Alexandria said calmly. "Do you have it contained?"  
  
I didn't respond immediately, trying to force down the adrenaline that had flashed through me at her sudden appearance, and refocusing on the Endbringer still doing its best to claw its way free, but I just readjusted the wires to keep it roughly in the middle of my field. I kept having to make some space between the cables for the water it was constantly generating to pass through, and it kept trying to take advantage of the space.  
  
"Yes," I said with false cheer. "Who knew Leviathan was such a rope-bunny?"  
  
Alexandria made no comment on my attempt at levity, still staring straight at the last place she had seen Leviathan. Sorry lady but ignoring me has never worked for anyone else and it wouldn't work here either, I had a reputation to uphold.  
  
"How long can you hold it?" Alexandria said evenly.  
  
I did another water drain and tighten cycle around it while increasing the size of the solid box I was building around it, made from strangely interwoven pillars. I wasn't letting this fucking thing out until we had a way to deal with it.  
  
"How long do you _need_ , sweety?" I said idly, "I can go all night."  
  
Alexandria turned bodily to stare at me, and I couldn't see her expression through her black glass mask, but she was either impressed at my wit or simply pissed off, either way, I'm sure I would find out soon. Somebody landed behind us, this time with plenty of noise to announce them, I could hear multiple voices further back and to the side as well.  
  
"Alexandria, what's the situation?" A male's voice said as he came to stand with us.  
  
I spared a glance over at him before going back to focusing on keeping the thrashing Endbringer in the middle of the wire prison, it was Legend, the leader of the Protectorate.  
  
"This unknown cape has Leviathan contained for the moment, but we can't keep it here forever, the waves will keep coming," Alexandria said firmly, her voice changing minutely as she spoke to her teammate.  
  
"This unknown cape has a name lady," I said without feeling. "and its Urchin."  
  
Legend moved so that he was properly in my line of sight, looking professional but grim.  
  
"Urchin, then." Alexandria acknowledged easily, before addressing Legend. "Eidolon is still building defenses against the waves, calling him in now will be an issue."  
  
Legend nodded grimly, before bringing his hand up in front of him and pressing a button on his bracelet. That Metal Man had tried to give me one just like, what felt like days ago now, even though it couldn't have been more than half an hour at most, focusing on so many wires at once was doing strange things to my internal clock.  
  
"Dragon put me through to everyone." Legend said calmly, and the screen on the bracelet lit up. "If you think you can do something to either _substantially_ damage or hinder Leviathan, make your way to my location, everyone else on search and rescue."  
  
Legend lowered his hand and the screen faded back to grey. Alexandria leaned over to his shoulder and they had a short exchange that I couldn't make out before they both fell silent. Leviathan still had made exactly zero progress on escaping as I continued to generate more material as it destroyed it and kept on adding it to the mass around it doing my best to keep him trapped firmly in the center.  
  
"I can't actually damage it at all, who do we have that can actually hurt it?" I asked distractedly, "and maybe we should get Armsmaster over here?"  
  
"He is already on his way." Alexandria said calmly, "Why Armsmaster? What are you thinking exactly?"  
  
I hadn't been thinking at all really, I just needed something to distract myself from Leviathan and all of fucking water that was now smashing into the massive wall of ice that Eidolon had created along the boardwalk to protect the city. Eidolon was definitely one of the good ones, I would have to invite him out for coffee with Dragon and Narwhal.  
  
"I could really do with a back massage, is all." I said wryly, "I've heard that he's pretty good with those arms of his."  
  
Legend turned away for a moment, and I absolutely knew even without seeing, that he was hiding a smile. The sounds of additional people approached from behind us, the sound of feet splashing water around on top of the pillar made me twitch. Legend and Alexandria both headed over to whoever it was immediately, I tried listening as they addressed the people who had showed up but couldn't make out the words through the rain.  
  
Instead, I just focused on the mass of rage that had just kicked it up a notch amongst the wires and did my best to replace and thicken the wires faster than it could destroy them, didn't this fucking thing ever get tired?  
  
I eventually heard a voice that was vaguely familiar, someone I must have heard in passing somewhere before, but I couldn't put a face to it, and after a moment I heard another voice that was definitely Kayden, she was approaching and talking quietly.  
  
"Boss," Kayden said tiredly, as she came to stand beside me.  
  
Kayden illuminated the area with her power and seeing that at least one member of the Full Frontals was still alive felt like a weight had lifted from my shoulders.  
  
"Bright Eyes," I said relieved, "is our third member still alive?"  
  
There was someone standing directly behind me now, I could hear them breathing quietly. I tensed up as whoever it was placed their hand on my back and a strange feeling encompassed me, I was halfway through burying the person in wire before Kayden placed her hand on my shoulder.  
  
"Calm down, it's just Othala," Kayden said quietly, "Legend wants her keeping you defended."  
  
I slowly breathed out, riding the spike of adrenaline down to nothing again, I really needed to get the fuck away from all of this water, it was messing with my head badly, and that's not even mentioning all of these people who kept on sneaking up on me. I don't think my heart could take it much longer.  
  
"Sorry," I said evenly, to the girl behind me. "I'm a little jumpy today, haven't the foggiest idea why."  
  
The hand returned to my back, and the lingering feeling of strangeness strengthened once more.  
  
"Mm." Othala said nervously, "It doesn't have anything to do with the Endbringer?"  
  
"Nah," I said dryly. "That was just the excuse that I gave to Legend so you would put your hands on me again."  
  
Othala laughed and I visibly turned my attention back to Kayden, still feeling off my game.  
  
"Squealer was fine the last time I saw her, she was with the rest of the support group," Kayden said belatedly, picking up where she had left off before the interruption. "I didn't know you could do something like _this_."  
  
I spent a long moment reinforcing the cage again as Leviathan spun suddenly in his bindings. I tightened my hold again, you're not going _anywhere_ you watery fuck. Squealer was still most likely fine, so that was good, none of us had died yet, I could only hope that our good fortune continued. I used my anger at the creature to try and pull myself together again, finally managing to find something to say.  
  
"There is a lot you don't know about me," I said mysteriously, "my precious minion."  
  
Kayden huffed.  
  
"That explains basically nothing," Kayden said annoyed.  
  
I just laughed mysteriously.  
  
"Minion?" Othala murmured.  
  
"Interested, are you?" I said immediately, "You'll have to quit all that silly racism nonsense of course, but I suppose I could let you into my harem."  
  
Othala muttered the word in disbelief.  
  
"Harem?" Kayden said amused, "Is that the same one you tried to get Dragon to join? How did that go again?"  
  
I felt the vicious sting of betrayal rip through me at the words, I couldn't _believe_ that she would roast me in front of the potential recruit, the sheer balls on this woman.  
  
"I cannot believe you have done this," I said deadpanned. "I'm kicking you out of the harem."  
  
Kayden scoffed before we were interrupted once more by the return of Legend, but this time he was accompanied by several others, Alexandria, Armsmaster, and Miss Militia. Armsmaster was completely covered in his sleek-looking blue armor, except for his mouth, and he had two different halberds strapped in a diagonal cross to his back. Miss Militia looked much the same as I remembered her, only much soggier.  
  
"Urchin." Miss Militia said softly, "This is very impressive."  
  
"Thanks," I said pleasantly, happy to see her still alive. "Can you guys kill this fucking thing, or am I going to be standing here until I die of old age?"  
  
I directed the question at all of them, hoping that they had something.  
  
"We are going to try," Armsmaster said seriously.  
  
Good enough for me.  
  
"We will need access to it, a pathway or a hole will be fine," Alexandria said steadily. "Is it possible?"  
  
Alexandria's voice still remained as unaffected as before, but I was still determined to get a rise out of her, it had become a challenge at this point, and she still refused to even look at me.  
  
"Sure, a hole sounds doable, it's going to be a _really_ tight fit though," I said cheerfully, "Think you can handle it, Alex?"  
  
Kayden let out a sharp exhalation of breath, somehow not expecting it despite knowing exactly what I'm like, and there was a beat of silence in which everyone else processed just what I said. Alexandria turned slowly to stare at me, and I took advantage of the stunned silence to speak up again.  
  
"Leviathan is seriously thrashing around in there, and its strong enough to dig through the metal of my wires, even the larger pillars given enough time, but I'm able to generate more material faster than it can destroy it," I said more seriously, studying her face. "I seem to be able to keep it juggled right in the middle of that mess for now."  
  
I pointed at exactly where I had dragged Leviathan, and they all turned to look at the writhing plane of wires in that area, but it didn't look any different from anywhere else. I paused for a moment to take a breath before continuing.  
  
"I can keep a thin tunnel open to it if that is what you want but its moving and twisting around a _lot,_ specifically its tail," I explained, "It's also still constantly making more water around itself in case you didn't already know."  
  
I fell silent after the explanation and refocused on Leviathan as they started to talk amongst themselves again and Alexandria finally looked away. I could actually hear most of the conversation this time, and they were discussing several ideas, I listened quietly for several minutes.  
  
The best ideas for damaging Leviathan that they seemed to agree on were Eidolon, Armsmaster's Nano-thorns, whatever the hell that was, Bakuda's leftover bombs, and a woman called Sundancer. But the strategies alluded to were much more varied, including holding out until Scion arrived, trying to take Leviathan to Scion somehow, trying to throw the creature into space, and a bunch of other more outlandish things.  
  
"What does Sundancer do?" I asked generally, "Something fire-related?"  
  
I knew that was one of the Travelers, I had seen the name before, but I couldn't remember what her power actually did.  
  
"Sundancer creates a miniature sun," Armsmaster answered evenly.  
  
I thought about that for a moment, why would you choose such a literal name? Just tell everyone exactly what you can do, surely that won't ever come back to bite you on the ass. I supposed that depending on what her range with the Sun was, we might be able to drop it straight down directly on top of Leviathan, but if it was really hot enough to hurt the creature, it would melt any of my wires that were in range. Leviathan would still have nowhere to go, being that there would still be hundreds of meters of writhing wires in every direction, but he would have space to move around until I could refill it. I suggested the idea and the problems I'd identified to them a moment later, better out than in.  
  
I just hoped that they decided soon because I was starting to feel sick again.


	25. Chapter 25

May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 12:37 PM.  
  
They started with Bakuda's bombs.  
  
The group of capes that were making the decisions had grown even larger, as more joined the group, both heroes and villains alike. The group had moved away from us and were talking quietly among themselves while leaving Miss Militia to relay my orders.  
  
I wasn't really included in the decision making, I was just the guy with the wires, and when they told me to jump, I made sure to do a flip. They were exactly twelve of Bakuda's bombs left in total, and apparently nobody had any idea what each of them would actually do, other than explode.  
  
This made me incredibly nervous, if there was an electrical bomb of some kind in there I was going to be _very_ pissed off.  
  
Leviathan hadn't relaxed at all, and the horrifyingly large waves were still coming strong, almost one every four minutes when I asked Miss Militia for an estimate. The ones running the whole shebang, Legend, and Alexandria, had sent most of the capes with defensive powers off to help Eidolon mitigate the waves.  
  
I just closed my eyes while doing my absolute best to ignore everything other than the wires and Leviathan. I moved the first bomb quickly through the wires and over to the creature, waiting just outside of its range until the last second, as Miss Militia counted down the timer.  
  
"Three, two, one." Miss Militia counted down, watching the bracelet on her arm.  
  
I moved the first bomb right up against its arm and I felt it explode through the sudden loss of a massive chunk of my wires, and something heavy appeared directly in the middle of the bomb's effect. Leviathan stopped struggling for a beat before it started thrashing even harder than before. Whatever the bomb had done to it had fallen off to the side, and I slowly pushed the object through the wires to the top of the cage.  
  
A large cracked half-sphere made of what must have been glass appeared. I lifted it into the air and carried it towards us slowly. There was a strange darker but still translucent patch within the sphere-shaped almost like a long and disproportioned arm.  
  
"It worked." Miss Militia said relieved.  
  
"Is that its arm?" Kayden said astonished.  
  
Leviathans arm had been entirely turned to glass, the bomb had worked. I stared at it amazed, could we actually kill this thing? Maybe we should break Bakuda out of jail and make her build like two hundred of these things. The next two bombs were already being moved into position with my wires, and I made sure to bring them in at Leviathan's left side, where its arm was now missing.  
  
It would make it harder for the creature to try to destroy them.  
  
"Three, two, one." Miss Militia counted down.  
  
I moved the second bomb towards Leviathan's leg, and it exploded, melting a large section of my wires, but apparently doing no damage to the creature at all. Leviathan tried to use the sudden space to leap up into the air, but I smashed it back down with a prepared pillar and recaptured it with some effort. Miss Militia was staring at me seriously, waiting for confirmation.  
  
"Nothing, it just melted a bunch of my wires," I said cheerfully.  
  
Miss Militia relayed the information through the bracelet and started the next count down. Bombs three and four were ineffective, number three froze everything around it, but only managed to do surface damage to the creature's skin. Number four didn't hurt it at all, and I'm not actually sure what it did.  
  
The fifth bomb made Leviathan's shoulder swell up into a massive ball of bulging flesh and stretched my wires bizarrely around it. I let the wires vanished and recaptured it again, its arm was seemingly still working at full effectiveness.  
  
"Its shoulder swelled up, some kind of strange warping effect," I explained happily.  
  
"Does its arm still work?" Kayden asked quietly.  
  
Miss Militia glanced at her clearly wanting to know the answer as well.  
  
"It's working perfectly fine, despite the shoulder being weirdly shaped," I said curiously.  
  
The sixth bomb did something bizarre to my wires around Leviathan's left leg and hip, slowing down my connection to them and gradually worsening the longer they stayed inside the effect. It seemed to take almost fifteen seconds before I lost connection with the wires inside. Leviathan's leg and its tail remained rooted in place, and it thrashed its upper body around savagely along with its remaining leg, its single mishappened arm still digging through my wires.  
  
"Whatever that last one did, it's paralyzed Leviathans left leg and tail," I said strangely, trying to figure out what was happening. "I can't move any more wires nears its leg anymore, it's like a solid orb is in the way."  
  
"Is it trapped?" Miss Militia asked seriously.  
  
I tried moving wires away from its upper body to see what happened, Leviathan didn't move from its place in the air, and I couldn't tell what it was doing without touching it. I scratched the back of my head trying to figure out what had happened.  
  
"It's stuck in mid-air, whatever the orb is it's floating on its own," I said helplessly.  
  
Miss Militia relayed it through the bracelet, before starting her countdown once more. I moved the seventh, eighth and ninth into range and started bringing them up against its remaining arm, one after another. None of them did anything remotely as damaging as the others, the ninth was bright enough to see even though the wire field, some kind of massively bright flashbang.  
  
The tenth bomb started dragging all of the surrounding wires inside of it, along with most of Leviathans remaining arm, the solid orb around its leg remained perfectly still. The effect seemed to grow stronger for almost thirty seconds before it suddenly vanished, sheering off the creature's right arm at the shoulder. I covered it in wires again, but most of the fight had seemed to have gone out of the creature now. It had nothing left except its right leg to fight off the wires, its left leg and tail were stuck in whatever the orb was, and its arms were entirely gone.  
  
"It sucked in a lot of my wires and took off its arm at the shoulder," I said cheerfully, making a wire replica of its current condition in front of us. "No arms, wonky shoulder, stuck leg, and tail."  
  
I made the replica flail its right leg around and Miss Militia relayed its condition, before counting down again. The eleventh bomb vibrated my wires hard enough to disintegrate them but did nothing to Leviathan, and the twelfth one was another ice bomb, which again did little to nothing.  
  
"Ice bomb again, no effect," I said easily.  
  
Bakuda might have been a shitty person, but damn if she didn't know how to make some effective stuff. That was all of the bombs used up now, whatever the next step of the master plan to get rid of Leviathan was, I had no idea. Miss Militia headed back over to the big group again and left me with Kayden and Othala.  
  
The waves were still coming relentlessly, and they were still continuing to grow larger with each one. Eidolon had moved out over the ocean now and was doing his best to disrupt the waves before they even reached the shore. A massive line of forcefields was covering most of the beach in front of the Downtown. The huge glacier that Eidolon had made was still bravely holding up.  
  
"I should be getting paid for this," I said distractedly.  
  
"Technically we are getting paid, just not for this," Kayden said amused and my eyes went wide.  
  
Coil.  
  
It had managed to slip my mind with everything that was going on, Skitter said he had kidnapped a girl. I stuffed my hand into my pocket and found it empty, I had dropped my phone back in the building, it would be long gone now. I turned to stare at Kayden for a second, before hesitating.  
  
Fuck it.  
  
"Minion, I need you to find me a cape called Skitter, one of the Undersiders." I said urgently, "Female, tall, uses bugs, do you know her?"  
  
Kayden turned to stare at me for a moment, probably wondering about the sudden change in tone, she waited a moment and then suddenly took off into the air, not even bothering to ask why. I watched as she stayed low enough to see everyone who was still standing on the pillars and started doing a lap around them.  
  
"Um," Othala said quietly.  
  
I blinked, having forgotten that she was there, her hand had been there long enough that it had fallen into the background.  
  
"This is the worst backrub I've ever had," I said outraged. "You'll have to do better than this if you want to be in the Full Frontals."  
  
"It's not a backrub!" Othala defended, "and I'm already on a team."  
  
I remembered seeing her name on the news, as one of the capes that had been unmasked, she was married to Victor if I remembered correctly. I'd honestly forgotten what her name had been though.  
  
"Yeah but the Empire sucks ass," I said honestly, and I felt her hand twitch against my back. "My team is where all the cool kids are."  
  
Othala seemed to be at a loss for words.  
  
"The Empire doesn't suck ass," Othala said belatedly.

* * *

May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 12:53 PM.  
  
When Purity returned with Skitter and Tattletale several minutes later, I had managed to drag Othala down to my level.  
  
"Does too!" I said gleefully while making a loud slurping noise.  
  
"It does not!" Othala said angrily.  
  
Othala was currently trying to pinch the skin of my back between her fingernails, somehow forgetting that she was making me invulnerable. Kayden put her hand on my shoulder to try and bring some order back to things. Skitter was standing just behind her, staring at me quietly while Tattletale was standing next to her with her arms crossed. Othala tensed up behind me when she spotted the two, and I realized belatedly that she thought that the Undersiders were responsible for unmasking the Empire.  
  
"Minion!" I ordered, trying to distract her. "Tell Othala how many asses the Empire sucks on the daily."  
  
"You're back to your old self at least," Kayden said dryly, before looking over my shoulder. "The Empire is a sinking ship at this point."  
  
I wasn't back to my old self at all, I was just doing my best to fake it. I was going to go straight home and cry myself to sleep if my apartment was still standing as soon as this was finally over.  
  
The Protectorate had moved onto using Sundancer's power on the now immobile Endbringer. My wires had immediately melted in a massive sphere around the miniature sun, there was a massive cloud of steam rising up into the air from the rain, and Leviathans water generation. I lost all sense of what was happening around the creature without my wires. It made me nervous not being able to see it anymore, so I moved some of the wires out of the way to give myself a clear view of the action.  
  
"Told you!" I taunted, and Othala made an angry noise in her throat.  
  
I turned to look at Skitter and she tensed.  
  
"I'm going to need the tea about Dinah, girlfriend," I said cheerfully, before snapping my fingers sassily. "When did she get kidnapped, where is she now and why would Coil do it at all?"  
  
Skitter didn't seem to hesitate at all.  
  
"Dinah was kidnapped from her home almost a month ago, I only just found out recently." Skitter said quietly while watching Leviathan. "Coil keeps her in his base somewhere, I'm not sure about the exact location, and the reason why is that she's a precognitive."  
  
"You know that it was _Coil_ that unmasked the Empire," Tattletale said suddenly, and I glanced over at her.  
  
Othala's hand moved again at the reminder and she murmured something under her breath that I didn't catch. Kayden was still playing catch up but had most of the pieces by now, I probably should have explained it before I sent her off.  
  
"Obviously," I said snootily. "Who is Dinah related to?"  
  
That was the only question I really needed to be answered at this point. I was almost entirely certain that Coil had done what they were accusing him of. It was too random, too obscene, and too strange for them to have just made it up. They would have come up with something more believable if that was the case.  
  
"She's the mayor's niece," Tattletale said easily.  
  
That's where I had seen the name. Roy Christner, the Mayor of Brockton Bay. He had been one of the suspects in the investigation for the Rail Tracer, and I had been checking on all of the relatives who fell into the age group for being a possible cape. Rory Christner had been one of them, and Dinah Alcott had been another.  
  
"When did you find out about this?" I asked pointedly, noticing that 'recently' wasn't an informative answer.  
  
Sundancer's sun had grown large now, bigger than a car at least. It mostly swallowed Leviathan's chest and head. The creature's skin was glowing bright red and molten bits of skin were dripping down the perfectly still silver orb that encapsulated its leg. The orb itself looked like a suspended ball of my wires, almost as if it had been touched by Clockblocker's power.  
  
"I found out yesterday." Skitter said quietly. "We were working on renegotiating with Coil after we took the blame for the unmasking situation."  
  
Skitter turned to look at Tattletale, who hesitated, seemingly trying to steel herself.  
  
"I've known he kidnapped her since a month ago." Tattletale admitted, "I didn't know he was keeping her drugged until yesterday."  
  
I fell silent after that, retreating into my head to figure out what I was going to do. Kayden was looking tenser now and was watching me carefully. I kept my eyes on leviathan as I thought, watching as less and less material was melting off it by the second. The heat was becoming less effective the deeper down it penetrated, but they hadn't yet given up on it, the sun was moved slowly down its body towards its remaining leg and Leviathan started going crazy again.  
  
I couldn't work for Coil anymore, not if this were the kind of thing he had been doing behind closed doors. I had always known he was a villain and that hadn't bothered me at all, I knew that _I_ was considered a villain by most of the heroes despite declaring myself as a mercenary, but this kind of thing went beyond general villainy into the territory of monsters. I had thought that when he had unmasked the empire that would be right on the edge of his limit. But apparently it was just where it started, what else had he been doing that I didn't know about?  
  
Coil was also now aware that I knew about it because I had called him and then fucking Leviathan had ganked us before I had gotten anywhere. Coil would be ready for me now, not that I really cared about that at all. I would need to be careful of everyone around me though, there were plenty of people that had come to fight Leviathan that had worked for or currently worked for Coil, any of them could try for an assassination. Would Coil break the Endbringer truce?  
  
I didn't think he would have before, but now I had no idea what he was willing to do.  
  
Despite currently being invulnerable thanks to Othala, I suddenly felt like I was a sitting duck up here. I started building an armored suit of shield-wires around Othala, I would need to keep her from dying.  
  
"Goddammit, Coil," I said resignedly and Tattletale suddenly looked relieved.  
  
I was probably being paranoid, but it was better to be safe than dead.  
  
"Hey!" Othala said nervously. "What are you doing?"  
  
"I just realized that someone could shoot either of us in the head, but only one of us is invulnerable," I said cheerfully.  
  
I had already begun crafting wire walls around us, only leaving a clear view of Leviathan. Skitter had taken a large step backward at the first sign of more wires popping up, and I could hear a buzzing noise coming from her. I eyed her suspiciously, she better not be planning on any dick biting.  
  
"Why do you sound so happy about that?" Othala said worriedly, but I ignored her.  
  
"What are we doing about Coil?" Kayden said seriously, moving to stand beside Othala.  
  
"Once we're done here we are going to go find Coil and kick his ass," I said resignedly.  
  
"You believe us?" Skitter said strangely, looking around at the structure now covering us all. "Just like that?"  
  
Why did she sound so surprised? Who would be okay with kidnapping and drugging a child?  
  
"Coil was already on notice anyway," I said sullenly, "I told him if he fucked up again I would be coming to kick his ass."  
  
Sundancer's sun suddenly winked out of existence, revealing Leviathan.  
  
"Skedaddle, Skedoodle, Leviathan is now a noodle," I said dryly.  
  
Leviathan almost looked like a stick figure, at least compared to its previous size, now that most of its muscle and bulk had been melted off. It was once again thrashing about, with its leg and tail still stuck in the orb, the loss of mass seemingly having no real effect on its movements. The ground rumbled savagely, another wave perhaps, but I did my best to ignore it.  
  
Leviathan's right leg was bulging slightly around the thigh as if something were inside. The other capes no doubt had noticed the same thing because Legend started layering the hell out of it to no success. I sent some more wires forward to try and hold the leg still, but it was a struggle. I had to squish its thin, clawed foot in between two pillars just to get it to stay still enough to start building up another weave of thicker cables around its leg, leaving the bulging spot uncovered.  
  
"Purity, you should go have a whack at it as well," I suggested like it was a pinata and not a giant world-ending monster.  
  
Kayden hesitated for a moment before flying over to the group assaulting its leg. I watched as the group made room for her and Kayden charged up a massive blast that disintegrated most of the wires around its thigh but did seemingly no damage to it. Narwhal must have been amongst the group as well because a torrent of pink shards suddenly flashed down and shattered on its leg.  
  
They clearly didn't have anyone who could breach the remains of its hide, we needed someone stronger. I started making a massive wire construct in the sky because clearly, no one else was going to go get the guy. I added a giant wire arrow pointing downwards at the Endbringer.  
  
"Tee-tee's." I said cheerfully, "You've been working for Coil for a while right?"  
  
Tattletale looked annoyed at the name but answered anyway.  
  
"Yes," Tattletale said carefully.  
  
"Does Coil know everyone's identities or just the Empire's?" I asked curiously.  
  
It was a question that had been burning in my mind for a while now, was I about to get unmasked?  
  
"Coil paid someone to start investigating the Empire almost four years ago." Tattletale said simply, "I'm sure he knows a few of the cape identities, if you are specifically asking if he knows yours, then I don't know."  
  
I was distracted for a second when Eidolon arrived in a flash of light, some kind of teleportation? He was seemingly speaking to the group of capes, before he floated down towards Leviathan, stopping next to its restrained leg. I couldn't really see what he was doing, he was too far away, and his back was facing towards us. There was a green light that was growing stronger by the second until it was almost as bright as the miniature sun that had been there not five minutes ago.  
  
I could feel my wires just vanish in a meter-wide patch around its leg, not enough for it to pull its leg free, but it was definitely trying. Almost three minutes passed before Leviathan suddenly stopping fighting against the wires and I tightened them as much as I could in case it was a trick, but It wasn't. Leviathan's thin body crumbled to dust, leaving nothing but Eidolon and a floating metal orb behind.  
  
Eidolon had managed the unthinkable, Leviathan was dead.

* * *

May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 1:13 PM.  
  
I started letting the wires inside the cage vanish slowly, making sure that none of the buildings fell over with their sudden disappearance. A surprisingly amount had survived relatively intact, albeit with surface damage to the windows and exterior, and of the ones Leviathan had gone through during its rampage were completely totaled. I let the outer pillars of the cage begin to slowly lower to the ground, along with the walls of the small bunker I had created around us.  
  
"Tomorrow," I said easily, "I'll need one of you to show me where Coil's base is."  
  
"Okay." Skitter said seriously.  
  
Tattletale was still staring at the ground of capes surrounding Eidolon, while Skitter looked like she wasn't happy about waiting another day, but I honestly didn't give a fuck. I needed to get away from all of this or I was going to break down.  
  
"Boss," Kayden said quietly.  
  
"Can you find Squealer and bring her back to ' _the place_.'" I said brightly, making sure to add finger quotes for emphasis.  
  
Kayden stared at me hesitantly for a long moment and I hoped she understood that I meant my apartment and not some random ' _the place'_. I distantly noted that some of the capes were moving towards us and decided now was a good a time as any to get the hell out of here.  
  
"Well on that note," I said cheerfully and clapped my hands once. "I'm going to go cry myself to sleep."  
  
I spun away from the three of them and headed for the edge of the pillar, which had almost reached the ground by now. I took off into the air a moment before the shin-high water could touch me and took a better look at the area.  
  
The first thing I noticed as I cut across the city was the enormous hole that definitely hadn't been in the middle of Brockton Bay this morning. It was as if a massive section of the city had simply fallen down into some kind of sinkhole and it was now filled with a massive amount of water. It honestly looked like a lake had suddenly appeared, and I absolutely hated it.  
  
The second thing I noticed was that my apartment building was missing.

* * *

May 15th, 2011, Sunday, 1:29 PM.  
  
I sat on the roof of the nearest intact building and stared at the remnants of my apartment. It was nothing more than a pile of concrete, twisted metal, and a sprinkling of shattered glass.  
  
Oh, I couldn't forget all of the water.  
  
"Fuck you, water lizard," I muttered quietly. "I hope Skitter gave you the Lung treatment before the end."  
  
Why did this keep on happening? Were there even insurance claims for Endbringer destruction? There had been for Parahuman destruction.  
  
Maybe I could tell them that Alexandria did it?  
  
At least none of the Full Frontals had died this time, that was all that really mattered in the end. I could always buy another apartment, as long as I could come up with the money, but people were irreplaceable.  
  
The thought of people who I couldn't replace just manage to bring all of it back to the surface again. I had thought I was making progress in putting everything behind me, but that had clearly been wishful thinking and I couldn't help but feel that I was backsliding.  
  
No apartment, no Coil to fall back on, and now everybody knew what a badass I was. That last bit sounds like a positive, and it kind of was in a way. I had wanted that almost since I had gotten my powers, but I knew that fame was a fickle bitch, and I couldn't help but think it was going to cause me a great deal of problems in the very near future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of advice from someone who started writing in his twenties:
> 
> If you're an aspiring writey-boi, writey-girl, or writey-person you should definitely start writing early, don't put it off until you think you'll suddenly be good enough. Nobody starts off any good. Getting better at writing, at least for me, is a grind that probably won't stop anytime soon. I'm sure there are hundreds of you out there that can do it as well.
> 
> if you have any worries about feeling foolish or getting a bad reaction from a reader, or scared of what people might think and its keeping you from taking that step; step forward courageously into the breach, and write something anyway.
> 
> The worst thing that can happen is that someone will say it sucks; the key is to not let that stop you.
> 
> More solid advice:  
> Use Grammarly.  
> Post somewhere you can get proper feedback on each chapter.  
> Consider all criticism you receive; Ignore the non-constructive ones.  
> Don't be discouraged by a bad reception of a single chapter; you have likely planned out the entire story, the reader doesn't have all that context yet and they might reverse their opinion later.  
> Write one chapter a week.
> 
> Feel free to disregard all of this! :P
> 
> Peace.


End file.
